(11 October, 2004)
Here is a Red Temmoku bowl, fired to cone 10r. The bowl is about
6" across. It is made of Loafer’s Glory, from
Highwater Clays;
the glaze consists of Brick Clay from western Wisconsin;
Wood Ash (Oak, unwashed); and Red Iron Oxide (84% purity).
I strongly suspect that the yellow teadusty or
“corn-pollen” sprinkles, which show up
particularly well on the interior, result from the ~2.6%
MgO content of the Brick Clay; I get essentially the
same effect in other iron-rich glazes if I add enough
Mg. (Oddly, although all or nearly all of the ancient
Chinese high-iron Jianware glazes contain noticeable
MgO, very few modern Western “Temmoku”
glazes seem to use magnesium. Go figure.)
(Click any of the small photos to get one that is 1280x960 px. If you want something even larger, you can change the “.10c.” in the filename of the large image to “.22c.” for the full-size originals, 2272x1704; just be aware that those files are about 1.5 MB each, and may take a while to download if you are on a slow connection.)
This bowl was donated to a benefit auction in Minneapolis.
Note: The word “Tenmoku” properly
refers to Jian teaware styles of the Song dynasty, not
to glazes. I am using the more modern form of the word,
“Temmoku”, to refer to glazes. The spelling
difference is regrettably slight, but I consider the
semantic distinction to be fairly important. I have
seen, from someone who failed to understand it, a claim
to the effect that there can’t possibly be any
White Tenmoku because “Tenmoku” glazes all
have high iron content. This turns out not to be the
case; I have held a White Tenmoku bowl in my hands, and
it was definitely real, albeit somewhat grayish.
My email address is a@b.com, where a is jon and b=joss.
Phone: +1 240 604 4495.
Last modified: Mon Oct 13 23:30:55 EDT 2008