TeachinArt.com
  • Home
  • Online workshops
    • All Artists Making A Living (AAMAL) >
      • Success stories
    • Handbuilding classes >
      • Porcelain handbuilding
      • Understanding Porcelain
      • Colored clay
      • Handbuilding Pottery For Beginners
    • Wheel thrown classes >
      • Porcelain Tips for Wheel Pottery
      • Take throwing to the next level
    • Teapot classes >
      • Pinching Teapots for Beginners
      • Faceted Teapot set
      • Wheel thrown teapots
    • Porcelain dinnerware >
      • Wheel thrown porcelain dinnerware
      • Handbuilding porcelain dinnerware
    • Glazing & Firing >
      • Shino glazing
      • Glazing made easy
      • Alternative firing
    • Painting >
      • China painting
      • Post-fired finishes
    • Woodworking classes >
      • Introduction to segmenting
    • Preview E-courses
  • Instructors
    • Antoinette Badenhorst
    • David Voorhees
    • Marcia Selsor
    • Connie Christensen
    • Nan Rothwell
    • Lynn Barnwell
    • Marie EvB Gibbons
    • Paul Lewing
    • Curtis Benzle
    • Robert Rundquist
  • Registered students
  • Contact us
  • About us
  • Tips and demos

10/7/2019

Bone China by John Shirley

0 Comments

Read Now
 
Picture
John with his translucent work in South Africa
In 2000 while studying for my BTech in Ceramic Design I decided that I wanted to work in a translucent body (up until this time I had always worked with porcelain) but I wanted to try something I had not worked in previously.

It was then that I chose bone china as the medium I wanted to explore. This has really been an exciting journey and bone china is the body I still work with today.

​The body is traditionally fluxed with bone ash and feldspar and stabilised with Kaolin. Fired to 1250C it produces a body of extreme whiteness and excellent translucency.

​As a ceramist living in South Africa where the choice of raw materials is more limited and the quality is less regulated than in many other countries, I was determined to make a translucent body with local materials. This is where my choice to work with bone china really paid off. What I discovered is that the bone ash in the body acts as a bleach on any traces of iron present in the kaolin in the body. As the local kaolins are far from the extremely white kaolins available overseas this proved to be a real bonus.
Picture
Antoinette Badenhorst discussed the translucency of the porcelain and bone china soluble salts with John during her visit in Bryanston, South Africa
Picture
​I started with the usual recipe of 50% bone ash, 25% Feldspar and 25% Kaolin which I made into a casting slip, as bone china is almost impossible to throw. Although my first results were not ideal they were very promising and I adjusted this first test. I tried many different kaolins. I changed from bone ash to tri-calcium phosphate which is synthetically produced. And within a few months arrived at a recipe that produced the results I was aiming for. With a few tweaks from time to time this is the recipe I still use today.
​The body has a high shrinkage and a tendency to warp in the firing and although I have tried several ways to stabilize the body in the firing with various setters, I now accept the gentle warping produced by the firing as a part of the process.
Choosing to work with bone china for my work is I feel something that has worked really well for me and the work I produce with this body is quite different to any work I would have produced using the porcelain body I was using before.

Links:
  • Demonstrations, tips and techniques at TeachinArt
  • Click here for the video Antoinette interviews John Shirley
  • John Shirley website www.johnshirleyceramics.com 
  • Antoinette's blog about difference between various kinds of porcelain

Share

0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

Details

    Author

    TeachinArt is an online school of art where professional artists present all the e-courses. Education and promotion of art and craft is the main focus.

    Archives

    February 2020
    October 2019
    September 2019

    Categories

    All
    Pottery Tips

    RSS Feed

Links to other pages
Home
Online workshops
Our Instructors
Registered Students
About Us
Contact Us
Tips & Demos
Behind the scenes
Student's work
FAQ
Reviews

Online workshop links by categories
Wheel thrown classes
Handbuilding classes
Teapot classes
Porcelain dinnerware classes
Glazing & decorating classes
Woodworking

©2020 TeachinArt
All rights reserved

Webmaster: Koos Badenhorst

  • Home
  • Online workshops
    • All Artists Making A Living (AAMAL) >
      • Success stories
    • Handbuilding classes >
      • Porcelain handbuilding
      • Understanding Porcelain
      • Colored clay
      • Handbuilding Pottery For Beginners
    • Wheel thrown classes >
      • Porcelain Tips for Wheel Pottery
      • Take throwing to the next level
    • Teapot classes >
      • Pinching Teapots for Beginners
      • Faceted Teapot set
      • Wheel thrown teapots
    • Porcelain dinnerware >
      • Wheel thrown porcelain dinnerware
      • Handbuilding porcelain dinnerware
    • Glazing & Firing >
      • Shino glazing
      • Glazing made easy
      • Alternative firing
    • Painting >
      • China painting
      • Post-fired finishes
    • Woodworking classes >
      • Introduction to segmenting
    • Preview E-courses
  • Instructors
    • Antoinette Badenhorst
    • David Voorhees
    • Marcia Selsor
    • Connie Christensen
    • Nan Rothwell
    • Lynn Barnwell
    • Marie EvB Gibbons
    • Paul Lewing
    • Curtis Benzle
    • Robert Rundquist
  • Registered students
  • Contact us
  • About us
  • Tips and demos