I have a talented artist who is planning to teach some sculpting. He works with several different types of clay but mostly makes casts of the sculpture instead of firing the final piece. So I’m curious what brand of clay would be used for firing and which brand would be least likely to explode or have issue when being fired?
Would hallowing out the sculpture be enough? Show he mostly focus on what he knows and just teach sculpting and possibly how to make a cast?
For firing:
‘Brand’ is less important than ‘Cone’. The key facet is at what pyrometric cone the given clay vitrifies at. The standard communal firings that we do in bulk are cone 6. If he finds a cone 6 clay that he likes the performance of for sculpting, then that would be the easiest to get fired on a regular basis. However, especially for a class, we can do one-off firings to a different cone, I would suggest options that stay under cone 8. Roughly speaking, 022-8, the scale is weirdly numbered, and depends on the rate of firing (temperature increase per hour). You can look at a cone chart here:
If he goes to Trinity Ceramics, they are especially good at helping to find the right clay body for whatever you are building.
Form:
Hollowing the form is (nearly) essential. This is how you will prevent rampant explosion. Pottery (mostly) blows up in a kiln due to trapped moisture inside the clay. As the water converts to steam and expands…boom! Sadness. Hollowing the form allows the piece to dry faster and more thoroughly. You can form clay around semi squishy materials during the sculpting process and then remove them prior to firing. A common solution is wadded up newspaper wrapped in plastic film but there are all sorts of options to be found online. @uglyknees and @Shirley might have some cool recommendations.
If he has any questions, please feel free to pass my information along to him and I would be happy to help. Depending on costs, we can also provide class materials and tools to assist. That will just need to be budgeted and approved in advance.
When I made my tabletop dragon sculptures, the body of the dragon was hollowed out
The head, neck, legs and some of the tail was solicit. the wings were based
in slabs Then were added after it was bisqued
Thank you!
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