During my studio internship at Baltimore Clayworks with Matt Hyleck, I was given access to clay materials and a wealth of knowledge from the many artists to experiment with more clay bodies. I stock piled quite a few different recipes that I either learned from different studio spaces, or that I found online through different resources.

I was mainly looking for 3 different factors: It’s sculptability, it’s firing color, and it’s cohesion with applied surface. The other thing limiting my mixing choices was time. I couldn’t possibly test every single clay recipe I found, so I narrowed down my choices based on any available photos or descriptions I could find (along with what materials I had easily available to me). This brought my choices down to a general clay body from Tova Beck-Friedman and a recipe from México simply called Gres para escultura.

For each test I will make a shrink bar (that will double for the absorption test) that will be fired to cone 6, and two mini busts with texture that will have a warm white underglaze and a black sigilatta brushed on. These two busts will be fired to cone 6 and cone 10.

The first round of testing involves mixing 10 different variations varying 3 different fire clays - Cedar Heights Gold Art, Hawthorne Bond, and Cedar Heights Red Art (going by A, B, and C respectively). This will test mainly fired color within the clay bodies and can account for variability between different proportions of the clays.

The second round of testing will take the singular version of clay that I like the most and then repeat the same version of 10 tests with 3 different proportions of grogs/fillers. I plan to split these into grog (fired clay or silica sand), kyanite, and nylon fibers. With these tests I’m mostly looking to see if there is a huge difference between these, or if there will be any benefits from mixing them.