“Red Temmoku”

(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.



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The Joss Research Institute
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Last modified: Mon Oct 13 23:30:55 EDT 2008