TeachinArt.com
  • Home
  • Online workshops
    • Understanding Porcelain
    • Handbuilding classes >
      • Porcelain handbuilding
      • 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
    • Dinnerware classes >
      • Wheel thrown porcelain dinnerware
      • Handbuilding porcelain dinnerware
    • Glazing & Firing >
      • Shino glazing
      • Glazing made easy
      • Alternative firing
      • Glazing with Ron Roy
    • Painting on clay >
      • China painting
      • Post-fired finishes
    • All Artists Making A Living (AAMAL) >
      • Success stories
    • 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
    • Ron Roy
  • Registered students
  • Contact us
    • About us
  • Tips / demos
  • Students work
  • Blog

Bone China by John Shirley

11/4/2019

2 Comments

 
John Shirley is a ceramic artist from South Africa, who was selected as a member of the International Academy of Ceramics in 2010. Here is John in his own words. 
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

Tags:
#SouthAfricanartist #bonechina #JohnShirley #translucentporcelain #IAC 
2 Comments

    Author

    TeachinArt is an online art school with professional artists as instructors who educate, enridge and promote art.

    Archives

    March 2022
    December 2021
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019

    Categories

    All
    Alternative Firing
    Artists
    Bone China
    Carving Clay
    Centering Clay
    Clay Sculpting
    Colored Clay
    Decorating
    Demonstrations
    Glazing
    Handbuilding
    Mixed Media
    Painting On Clay
    Paper Clay
    Pinching Clay
    Porcelain
    Pottery Glazing
    Pottery Tips
    Raku
    Slip Casting
    Soluble Salts
    South African Artist
    TeachinArt Students
    Teapots
    Trimming
    Weaving
    Wedging
    Wheel Throwing
    Woodworking 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

Workshops 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
    • Understanding Porcelain
    • Handbuilding classes >
      • Porcelain handbuilding
      • 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
    • Dinnerware classes >
      • Wheel thrown porcelain dinnerware
      • Handbuilding porcelain dinnerware
    • Glazing & Firing >
      • Shino glazing
      • Glazing made easy
      • Alternative firing
      • Glazing with Ron Roy
    • Painting on clay >
      • China painting
      • Post-fired finishes
    • All Artists Making A Living (AAMAL) >
      • Success stories
    • 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
    • Ron Roy
  • Registered students
  • Contact us
    • About us
  • Tips / demos
  • Students work
  • Blog