My 11th book published

Posted on 14/02/2022 by hotnsticky

This week I received a box in the mail from Korea. It contained copies of my latest book translated into Korean.

I was such a poor student of English at school. I’m somewhat surprised that I have become a published author of multiple books in 3 languages!

Even my English teacher from High School was surprised, to the extent that when I met him 10 years after leaving school, at a reunion, he didn’t believe me when I told him.

I don’t blame him.

My work building our wood fired kiln continues. This last week I have finished the chamber arches with Janine’s help.

Adding their second layer of insulation bricks and welding on the steel bracing.

I also started work on the chimney with the help of my good friend Warren on the weekend.

The chimney is almost at the height that I can’t build anymore courses until I cut a hole in the roof to allow it to go through.

This will involve fabricating some specialised pieces of galvanised sheet metal ‘flashing’, custom fitted to the brick courses just above the tin roof to keep the rain out.

I hope to complete the chimney this week. More ladder work!

I have declared myself an honorary 59 year old for the past week to allow me to keep climbing ladders 🙂

We have now picked nearly all the apples and I cooked another apple and almond flan tartin for our weekend guests.

I also made the first batch of baked quinces, as the birds had decided that it was time to start eating them, dropping a lot of them onto the ground with just a few holes pecked into them.

They need to be dealt with pronto, or the damage soon spreads and they go bad quickly. I wouldn’t mind so much if they ate the whole thing, but they just peck a hole into the fruit to get to the seeds inside. If the fruit drops, they just watch it fall and start on another. At least the rabbits eat some of the fallen fruit. Quince fed rabbit sounds pretty good!

I wash the fluff off the skin, then peel and core, chop into 4 pieces for small fruit, or 8 pieces for the larger ones. I simmer them for 20 mins in a sugar syrup of 120 grams of sugar per litre of water. This syrup is less than half strength of the recipe ! Use enough water to cover the volume of fruit. Add a few cloves, star anise, a cinnamon stick, and half a small bottle of maple syrup. Once softened a little, transfer to a large baking dish and bake for 2 hours in a low oven at 160oC until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Remove the aromatics and bottle in sterile jars while hot from the oven. I think that they are ready when they start to catch just a little on the tips and have turned a beautiful reddy/orange colour.

The fragrance is spectacular and the taste is amazing. Can be eaten just like this, or can be enhanced a little with the addition of some pouring cream, plain yoghurt or ice cream.

I also managed to find just enough zucchini and squash flowers, both male and female to make up the numbers, so that I could make stuffed zucchini flowers for dinner. I wasn’t expecting to find so many suitable flowers this late in the season, so wasn’t prepared with suitable quantities of cottage or other suitable cheeses. Instead I used a tub of left over risotto from the fridge. extended with some boiled lentils and a few olives. It made up the distance.

This last week also brought a little bit of excitement into our dull, plodding, Post Modern Peasant lives. The State Government Funded green waste clean-up program commenced, for all the dead and damaged trees in people yards that were created by the 2019 Black Summer catastrophic bush fires here in the Southern Highlands.

We had a team of half a dozen blokes here for two days, lopping, topping and chopping dead trees. Some were completely removed and the stumps ground out, but most were pruned back to make safe habitat trees for wild life.

They shortened and made safe 15 trees and took down 3 or 4 smaller ones in the immediate vicinity of our back yard orchards, where we work and mow.

The purpose of the exercise is to get most of the smaller dead branches down out of the canopy so that it is safe to walk around underneath them in our garden. We had already dealt with the most pressing and difficult problem trees in our front garden 2 years ago at our own expense. I wasn’t prepared to survive the fire and then be killed by a falling branch.

It’s only taken 26 months for the State Government to implement this emergency safety solution into place. I wonder how long it takes them when they take their time 🙂

We still have 3 acres, or one and a bit hectares of dead forrest that is continually dropping dead branches. We just don’t go there, and if I have to, I wear a hard hat.

It’ll be unsafe for the next couple of decades as the dead branches slowly rot and fall. But what can you do? It’ll cost many thousands of dollars to get them all pruned safely.

We’ll just have to live with it.

Vegan Wood Firing

Posted on 28/07/2019 by hotnsticky

It is a beautiful clear, sunny day here today. The air is cold and a little fragrant. I’m not too sure what with, but it is crisp and refreshing. We have been up to Sydney and back for the opening of the wood fired show, at Kerrie Lowe Gallery, where we have our work on show.

This is a small white tenmoku bowl with a lovely soft ash deposit on the fire face, showing grey some carbon inclusion on the body and rim.

A very delicate and beautiful object.

These are two of janine’s blossom vases. These two vessels are inspired by Korean ‘Moon’ jars. On this occasion, Janine has incised a sgrafitto, carved band illustrating the phases of the moon, as a way of linking these beautiful pots back to the origin of their inspiration in Korean, where we have spent a bit of time recently doing our research.

These pots were fired in just 4 hours in our small portable wood fired kiln. This little kiln is so environmentally friendly that I call this type of firing ‘Vegan Wood firing!

All the fuel for this kiln is collected from wind falls in our paddocks. Large old eucalypt trees are constantly dropping dead branches. We have to go around collecting these dead branches to keep the ground clear so that we can mow the dead grass. We have to mow, because in summer, high dead grass is a severe fire hazard. So part of out land management plan is to keep the ground around our house clear of fire hazards, as we live in a very bush fire prone area.

Having picked up all these dead branches, it seems irresponsible not to use them productively. By firing our wood kiln with wind falls, we are not hurting the trees in any way. No tress were harmed in the making of these pots. Hence ‘Vegan Wood Firing’. As we only use what the tree has rejected and finished with. It is also worth noting that some of the carbon that we collected from the atmosphere through the trees that we have grown here over the past 40 or so years is now encased chemically in our pots, making it securely trapped, more or less forever. So we are doing our bit to reduce the carbon load in the atmosphere. Carbon sequestration and removal on a personal scale.

We each do what we can.

Sericite Journal 4. Out of the fire and into the flying man (’s baggage)

Posted on 08/06/2019 by hotnsticky

While my kiln is cooling down. I go for walk along the river, the runs behind the Museum.

Today I see a white crane stalking the shingly shallows, although he doesn’t look to be doing much business this morning. Maybe he is so full already that he is having a rest?

I also spot a black cormorant, ducking and diving. Popping up again here and there, working the deeper river pools.

Slowly a fisherman comes into view, he is strolling quite slowly up stream with his net in hand. He is working the river between the road bridge and the foot bridge. He stops to cast his net out occasionally, apparently with little or no success. I’ll put my money on the cormorant any day.

The sun is well up and I can’t see the sun. The air is just as dirty today as it was yesterday and will be tomorrow. I imagined when I arrived here this time that it was just some intermittent phase in the air currents. I don’t remember it being this bad before, one, two, three or even 4 years ago. This is my 5th visit to work here. Miles away from the industrialised region of Seoul and it’s the worst that I’ve seen it. The air should be cleaner here. It used to be. I remember being appalled on my first visit here when I returned to Seoul to fly out. I couldn’t see the sky scrapers through the coach’s windows until I was right next to them. This is awful, I was appalled before, simply because of the contrast of country and city. I feel my chest tightening each day. Now the smog is every where. There is nowhere where it isn’t thick and grey.

I get to make another visit to the clay processing building, as there is a problem with the rock crusher that they have just acquired, 2nd hand. Apparently the electric motor starts to smoke after 20 mins of use, i have a close look at it , just from the outside. I can see that the motor is recently reconditioned, the over-spray is still evident on the motor housing and wiring. I’d say that it has burnt out the motto previously in its past life, That may be why it was for sale 2nd Hand?

I suggest t hat they do some research on other new models of this kind of machine and check out what sort of horsepower in really needs. I typed this last sentence in 10 seconds just now, but last week it took me about ten minutes to say all this is several goes at it using the translation app! Waiting for them to formulate a reply or ask another question, then I type my one fingered reply on my tiny, phone virtual key board. It takes a long time.

That’s just the way it is here with me and complex ides and a language that I can’t speak. I feel like I’m a child sometimes. I ave some complex questions that I would like to ask, but when I start to formulate the sentences. The moment has passed and I can see that i will al lot more contextual material for this all to makes one sort of sense. So i give up and wait for another occasion. They must think that I’m stupid sometimes.

It’s a fantastic resource to have available to them to efficiently process their own sericite porcelain from the excellent, but slow, ‘wet-method’ from ball milled slip, filter press and vacuum pugmill.

Colour me ‘Venco-Green’ with clay processing envy!

I the afternoon Mr Jung takes me for a ride, up to the South/North Korean border. There is a lookout post where you can see over the no-mans-land. The road takes us to the east of here through a volcanic crater that is called the ‘Punch bowl’. It is intensively farmed due to the rich volcanic soil within the extinct volcanic crater. It reminds me of the Rutherglen region of Northern Victoria. Great wines are grown in that rich soil and concentrated micro climate.

The lookout post is on a high ridge that is part of the caldera’s edge. I was not allowed to take any photographs of the Northern side of the border, facing the other way, as it is forbidden, and the solder/sentries on duty at their posts make sure of it.

I can report that there is absolutely nothing to be seen. Is this because there is so little development in the North? Perhaps. But I am skeptical. I think it more likely that The North, knowing that there is a clear view into their territory from this high place, have made sure that there is absolutely nothing to be seen.

Imagine the image below with no roads, no farms, no power lines, no clearing, no development of any kind. Just the green rolling hills, going on into the distance. That’s what you can see of the North from here.

Last year when I was here for the Moon Jar conference, the streets in the village were being dug up, deep trenches dug and piping installed. The workers were so very efficient. We were amazed at the time how quickly the work was completed. 3 days for each street, excavated, piping installed, road rebuilt to as-new standard. Fantastic. So little inconvenience to everyone.

I wondered at the time what was being installed.

Now on my return, I can see that every home now has a reticulated LP Gas line and meter next to their house. The homes that are also restaurants, also have a small storage tank as well. I’m assuming that this is to allow peak load at the lunch time and dinner time rush hour, so that they don’t drain the pressure from the street.

This little village is miles from anywhere and a very long way away from Seoul, but the government is committed to reducing the air pollution. One way is the stop the use of coal briquettes being burnt in the countryside where this old anachronism is still in common use.

Coal is a very dirty fuel at the best of times, and the use of crude briquettes in an up draught stove is a real 3rd world solution to cooking and many thousands of women die of respiratory disease each year. Korea is a very technically advanced nation. They built my electric car for me for example. However, way out here in the countryside. Miles from anywhere. Some of the households are still using coal, as they have for 100 years. It’s a credit to the current government that they have funded this development in such a remote place.

I can’t imagine that the gas is pumped all the way from Seoul. It’s just too far to imagine. I assume that the liquid, compressed gas is trucked here from the refinery, to some local depot, where it is stored, evaporated and reticulated in the local network. I’m impressed, as I am with much that is happening here. They still need to stop building and selling diesel engined vehicles though.

As I walk down the street today I can see that one house is still using the dirty coal briquettes, as the spent bisque fired, low quality, circular coal briquettes are stacked up out side the dwelling. I know that some of these spent fuel blocks are crushed and used as a fertiliser. I’ve seen the remnants of them scattered through some of the vegetable patches.

I remember reading an old book back in the 70’s, called ‘Farmers of Forty Centuries’. It was a really interesting book that described the life of farmers of Asia, in China, Japan and Korea, their lives and techniques. I say that it was an old book, because it is! It was published in 1911. There was a chapter about digging silty clay out of the irrigation channels and making mud bricks from it. The bricks were made into a ‘Kang’, a wood fired stove that has an extended horizontal flue area that doubles as a warmed bed base at night after dinner.

After several years, the ‘Kang’ is demolished and recycled. The mud bricks, wood ash and whatever other minerals have been absorbed by the bricks are all crushed to powder and spread through the vegetable garden as a fertiliser! 110 years later, the old technique is still practised by some of the older residents of this village.

The other thing that I see that is different in the village is the new solar powered telephone. This is very new and quite impressive. I’m mostly impressed by the fact that the phones here aren’t vandalised and still work. I must say that I’ve never seem anyone in there using it, as every young person in the village seems to own a mobile and the signal is very good here. There is also a new electric car charger in the car park!

The other thing that is a huge difference here is the construction of the new Museum extension. It is HUGE!

It looks to be about 3 or 4 times bigger than the old single room, exhibition area and offices building. The existing space was very cleverly divided into a lot of smaller ‘rooms’ using divisions to visually break up the big single volume, into more intimate spaces, each with a small specialised minor subject, display or video, used to explain some particular part of the amazing local history of the discovery and development of the single stone sericite porcelain story, that is endemic to this place.

The new building will occupy the entire length of the grounds from the road frontage, right down the side of the old Museum building and all the way down the side of the site, to the river-frontage walkway at the rear.

The new Museum extension will apparently consist of three new exhibition areas. Each with a particular theme. One of them will be a flexible space for a changing series of contemporary themed shows. One will have a small space for a glass case with my contributions to the continuing story of the Yanggu/Bangsan unique sericite porcelain history.

I look forward to getting to see it all finished on my next visit here.

Friday comes around soon enough and I have an appointment with the governor of the local government area or Province in his offices in the city. Mr Jung has it all arranged. He has made the appointment a couple of weeks ago, when I first arrived and presented him with my 3 porcelain bowls made from the ‘borrowed’ sericite stones of my last visit, now all glazed with my local kangaroo blue opalescent glaze and returned to their birthplace in an enhanced form. The Premier seems to have been suitably impressed by the gift of my cultural amalgam of Australian/Korean porcelain culture. As a way of promoting the Museum and gaining some exposure for his project, both with the political ‘machine’ of local government, who are funding the new Museum expansion, but also in the papers for local residential exposure/consumption. Mr Jung is always working to promote his life’s work and interest in sericite porcelain. Mr Jung and I are possibly the only two men in the world just now who are practising this ancient art form.

We meet in the Premiers Office. Myself, Mr Jung, Myeongki my translator and several local government minders. We are ushered into the Premiers private office, with its loverly, large round table and very plush leather lounge chairs. The official photographers are there and capture the moment for the press release. Everyone benefits from this meeting.

The Premier will be in the press showing that he is supporting the arts. Mr Jung can show that there is international recognition of the importance of his Museum. And I get to realise that I am under-dressed for a top level political meeting! After a bit of small talk, the Premier reaches out and holds my hand for the second photo-shoot.

I present him with the pots and a copy of my ‘5 Stones’ book, recently translated into Korean. He is polite and is well briefed. He says thank you for the important cultural gift, that now links our two countries. He tells me that he is impressed. They are beautiful. He also understands that I have developed a kiln design that is smaller, cleaner, more fuel efficient and less polluting than the traditional Korea wood fired kiln. I reply that I think that this is true. I have been working on this technology for a several decades now and the design is becoming quite sophisticated.

He replies that he thinks that Korea must have this technology, and goes on to express the opinion that they are intent on cleaning up their environment and doing what they can to become more environmentally friendly. Mr Jung has already made a proposal to build such a kiln at the Beakto Porcelain Village in Bangsan. The Premier says that he thinks that they should fund a project like this and also have the new wood firing book translated into Korean as well. I’m a bit shocked, is it that easy? Apparently it is. I wasn’t expecting that!

We have tea and the locals discuss something, all in detail in Korean, that my translator describes to me in small whispered chunks, as it really doesn’t actually involve me at all. It’s secret-mens-political-business that involves the realities of the local government political/economic system. The meeting ends with much hand shaking, smiles and bowing. We leave and everyone seems happy with the result.

It appears that this was just the event to push the new kiln site and kiln building proposal over the political line. Apparently the combined project will be fully funded now, as well as the book. Is it really that easy? I think that there may have been a lot of lobbying going on for a long time behind the scenes? This may just be a ‘way-marker’ point. I mention this to my translator out in the street, adding that in Australia, politicians are renown for saying one thing in public, while doing another, totally different thing behind the scenes. She nods and agrees, politics is probably the same all over the world? Inferring that we will have to wait and see.

My Jung has managed to get the 6 million dollars to build the new Museum extension. He’s an impressive man. Maybe this much smaller, micro-project will happen too?

I cast my mind back 4 or 5 years to my first meeting with Mr Jung in 2015? with Ms Kang as my interpreter at that time. There were two architects invited in to see my presentation to Mr Jung about my research. I can only guess now, that they were there working on the new Museum plans at that time? That would make sense, as these large projects take a long time frame to evolve, develop, mature and eventuate.

The next day, the kiln is cool and my work comes out. I get to see not only my pots, but also the clay and glaze tests that I made from Mr Jung’s new glaze stone deposit from the hill behind his house.

My pots are mostly good. A few have minor faults, but most are good. A few are great, beautiful clear, rich, translucent examples of sericite at its best. I could have applied the glaze a little thicker to get a richer colour. I did give some of my pieces a second dip in the glaze to hopefully get a better result, but second dipping can lead to problems and I didn’t want to loose all my work from a preventable problem, so just did half. These turned out the best, and now I wish that I had been brave enough to have done them all. My intuition was correct, but my caution was justified, it’s a good outcome. In the worst case scenario I could have lost all my work. So it’s all good.

It’s very interesting to me how the different sericite bodies influence the same glaze in the same firing to come out looking so different. All local sericite porcelains, each showing their own individual character.

The glaze test results are very good. The new stone produces a beautiful satin blue celadon style glaze at 1270oC in reduction. It’s really good. I could use a glaze like this with pride on my work.

Most of the staff are there to see the unpacking, but Mr Jung has to go out to a meeting somewhere, so doesn’t stick around.

I start to explain to some of the resident researchers and a few of the staff just what I was doing with the glaze grid tile. No-one seems to have seen a grid tile before. It seems that they don’t learn much glaze chemistry in the art schools any more. Just like in Australia and the UK.

Janine and I were invited to do some work for the new ‘Clay College’ in Stoke on Trent last year. Clay College is a fantastic initiative. It’s an attempt to re-start a new hands-on ceramics course for potters in the UK, as it seems that all the universities that once taught ceramics have all been converted to ‘design’ schools, where students ‘design’ objects that get made somewhere else, by someone else, like China, or pumped out from a 3D printer?

I explain that the function of this test is to analyse the stone to find out its chemical analysis in % oxide composition. This sort of thing has usually to be done at great expense in a university chemistry lab using electron microscopes or similar.

I explain that I have developed a simple technique for achieving this using just a simple set of scales and a few ingredients.

They had all watched me make the test a few days ago. Now they see the outcome. I look at the colour and melt activity of the test tile and compare it to my data base of known results. I can quickly ascertain the oxide analysis. From there I can use ‘Segar Formula’ to adjust the glaze stone to make it do a number of different things.

I see that every one is very quiet. Eventually someone asks “what is that formula?”. No one has even heard of chemical formula for glaze calculation. It seems that the only glazing that’s taught here is how to buy a glaze from the pottery supply shop catalogue. We are at that point here in Australia now. Nothing difficult or technical is being taught.

I give a quick class in glaze calculation. One of the older students tells me that he was taught something like that 20 years ago, but wasn’t paying attention and couldn’t see any reason to learn it at the time. Could I go through that all again slowly please.

I do and they slowly get the drift of the exercise. Not the Segar Formula part, but the compound line-blend test tile exercise. They really like the glaze quality of the result and the ease of ascertaining that result with just one test using a totally unknown stone.

They ask me how I learnt how to do this? Who told me that this was possible. I tell them that it is my own invention. I developed this testing technique during my PhD studies, as I was focussed on using local stones to make local porcelain. More or less trying to achieve in a few years what you have been doing here for 700 years!

I fettle and grind my pots ready to go. I pack them in 3 equal lots and wrap them very well in bubble wrap. One batch goes into my suitcase wrapped again in my clothing. A second lot is slid into my back pack. It just fits and the last group are packed into a cardboard box and taped up. I assume that I will have to pay excess baggage fees to get them onto the plane.

On the last day before I leave Bangsan, Mr Jung takes me up to the Baekto Porcelain village to say good bye to the resident researchers, Mr Jung wants to show me something. The money has come through as promised and work has begun on the new kiln shed. It looks like the project will be going to happen a lot faster than I could have imagined. The Premier is a man of his word.

The site has been a excavated and men are at work setting up formwork ready to cast the concrete footings for the new kiln shed. They have to dig down 1.8 metres to get down below the frost line where the ground freezes during winter. Here that is very deep as the temperature drops to below minus -30oC in winter. The frozen soil will expand and cause the ground and everything on it to crack unless the site is well prepared like this.

Mr Jung explains where my kiln will go in this huge shed. Over on the left hand side, there will be at least one other kiln in here and possibly two, in years to come. One of them is going to be a 5 chamber, traditional climbing kiln. A juxtaposition of the old and new in wood firing techniques.

Mr Jung missed my glaze lesson and asks Daewoong to ask me if I can send him my PhD thesis? I reply that of course I will be pleased to do so, but it is 120,000 words in English and academic English at that. Maybe I should just send him the glaze calculation part about rock glazes? As it happens I just happen to have a book called ‘Rock Glazes and Geology for potters’. I’ll post him a copy. I can see yet another translation project coming along in the future?

This may be my last attempt at a travelers’ tale from Korea.

I considder myself just so lucky to have met such incredibly nice, creative and supportive poeple here.

Best wishes
Steve

Sericite Journal 3 – Ashes to ashes, dust to glaze

Posted on 04/06/2019 by hotnsticky

While my work dries and I wait to pack the bisque, there are a few people and places I need to catch up on. I’m invited to both a lunch and a dinner with the students and staff of the Museum on two different days. I love Korean food, everything comes with chilli, even some sweet things!

After we have finished eating our lunch, it’s time to settle down and help the residents of the Baekto Porcelain Village make a thousand glaze test tiles. Everyone gets involved at different times. Many hands make light work and they are all made in one day.

I’m not really part of the group and I’m not too sure how I can help out in an unobtrusive way, so I decide to do the picking up off the floor of the cut sections and place them within reach of the real workers who know what they are doing. Later, having shown interest and done my time on the floor. I’m promoted to press-moulding the curved sections ready for assembly.

Before leaving the village, I wander up to the kiln shed to check out the kilns and I see 4 pallets of 2nd hand fire bricks, all cleaned and wrapped and one pallet of new firebrick slabs. I quickly calculate that this is about 2,000 bricks and 90 slabs. I’m guessing that these have been purchased for the kiln building workshop that Mr Jung has proposed to me. It may take some time to eventuate, as there doesn’t seem to be a a floor slab or roof for the kiln as yet.

I am scheduled for a meeting with Mr Jung and The Premier of the County of Yanggu, or State President, along with Myeongki Shim, the translator who has worked with me in the past and did the translation of my book, 5 Stones, into Korean. We are scheduled to meet on Friday to discuss the idea of offering a workshop style summer school open to potters to come and take part and learn about the down draft firebox in the process. I can see this taking some time to organise.

It might not be the lack of a slab and roof that hold things up? Political realities being what they are, and money being hard to come by. We’ll have to wait and see.

I’ll need to do some calculations to get the whole thing to work correctly, as all the bricks are solid, hard fire brick, so this will limit what I can achieve with just one simple fire box. I’m also told that they don’t want to use ceramic fibre here for the lightweight firebox stoke-hole door, so there goes the idea of a top loading firebox lid and a throat chamber lid. It is starting to look like I might be building quite a small kiln, as I want to build and demonstrate a simple example of a single firebox, single chamber kiln that can be fired fairly cleanly in one day. Something in total contrast to the week long firings that take place in the traditional 5 chamber kiln that they have here.

The water wheel is working today, as Daewoong the resident wood fire potter, is keen to prepare some porcelain stone by the old method of using the stamp mill to crush the sericite. I’m unsure what he is planning, it could be for glaze instead of body material. Time will tell.

I can see across the valley to the new solar power farm that has recently been installed to generate solar electricity for the village. The admin block here was already covered in Solar PV panels, as is the Museum roof. It is noticeable to me that the new solar farm hasn’t taken any usable flat ground that was already used for farming. They have chosen to use the slope of the hill to get a good azimuth angle to the solar rays and not upset any farmers by taking over fertile, flat, productive land.

There has been a firing going on in the big gas kiln all day. The kiln is used by the residents in the porcelain Village. They can book the kiln individually, or as a group firing. They only have to pay for the gas consumed. As I understand it, the residents get free rent of studio and housing spaces, plus free use of the equipment like kilns, wheels, slab roller and pug mill, etc. They only have to pay for their own food, heating, kiln fuel and any exotic raw materials that they may wish to pursue. It seems like a too-good-to-be-true deal from my point of view, as an outsider from Australia, where the Arts are more or less ignored, or if acknowledged, they are mistrusted and/or miss-understood by the general public, encouraged by the Murdoch press, and any money spent on the Arts is roundly ridiculed by the conservatives. No wonder the facilities here are all full. It seems that the locals think that this is normal and complain about having to pay their own heating bill! I couldn’t get a room in the student accomodation building this time round. Everything is fully utilised, so Mr Jung has kindly offered to allow me to stay in his home with him, 30 minutes away in Yanggu.

When I get to the Museum and Research Centre the next day. The bisque kiln is ready to be packed. My work is all completely dry now. I take it over to the kiln room for packing. There are 2 large electric kilns used for bisque firing on a regular basis. These are used to fire the the part-time students work from the teaching facility.

My work is slotted in where it will fit among the regular student projects. My work isn’t large, so it can be fitted in economically. I nest stack them to conserve space. I start with a 5 high stack, but I am discouraged by the technical assistant/pottery teacher. He seems to indicated that with this clay, its particular dry strength and firing characteristics, it is better to just go 2 high, so I do. The firing goes on over night using a ramp programmer. It’s all very modern and efficient in this regard. However, in contrast to this, they also have a 5 chamber traditional wood fired climbing kiln as well for the wood firing enthusiasts. We took part in a 4 day firing of that wood kiln the last time we were here.

While my pots are cooling down from their bisque firing. Mr Jung arranges our us to go on a geology expedition up into the mountains behind Yanggu. There are some logging tracks that we can use to get us up there quickly. He tells me that because he was born and grew up here in the foot hills of these mountains, he has tramped over most of it through the years. We swap his LPG-hybrid, city sedan, for his parents small 4 wheel drive, and set off. He wants to show me a couple of sites that he thinks might be worth our while investigating.

After a slow and bumpy 45 minute drive over the rough logging tracks, we arrive at the first of what turns out to be 5 sites. This material looks to be a weathered or kaolinised, fine to medium grained acid rock with some small amount of free silica. It’s impossible to say what is in it, but I can hazard a guess that it has some sort of primary clay such as Kaolinite, Halloysite, illite or dickite. It also has the obvious spangles of some free silica that is just visible in the bright sunshine, then there may be some flux minerals such as the felspars or micas, if they haven’t all be weathered down to the clay minerals. The stone is very soft and easily broken up by bashing it together, so I’m certain that it will be low in flux and higher in clay minerals.

The stone is so rotten, that the fragments are just tumbling down out of the hill side. To my naive geological eye, it looks pretty much like a lot of the material that I have collected back home in the Southern Highlands. It may be able to be finely milled to become sufficiently plastic to be throwable. But they already have a marvellous sericite body here that is beyond excellent, white, plastic and translucent. This new stuff won’t compete. I’m thinking that it might be possible to make a glaze out of it, but it looks a bit too weathered, kaolinitic and refractory to make much of a glaze with just limestone as a flux. I’m not sure, I get the feeling that it might need some extra felspar as well, and perhaps a little ash with it as well?

I have no real concrete evidence for this thought, it is just what I have experienced back home in my previous research in Australia. The stones that are hardest to crush usually have the most intact alkali content and melt well. The softer materials that are very crumbly, have usually lost a lot of their alkali during weathering and are more refractory. Where this stone fall on the spectrum i can only guess at this point. I won’t know until I have fired some. However, my guess is that it will fall somewhere smack in the middle. Unmelted on its own, but forming a glaze at the end of the line blend series, requiring the maximum calcium flux.

When we get back the the Museum a few hours later, I set to work making a few tests. I Start with a grid tile test to ascertain the chemical analysis. This is a unique test that I developed during my PhD. I involves producing a series of line blends with specific additions of a set ratio. The resulting grid tile when glaze fired, shows a particular range of melts and colours. By comparing the new material test with my data base of known and chemically analysed test tiles. I can deduce the chemical analysis of the oxides present in the new material to with in a couple of percentage points. It saves having to send the material off to the university chemical lab and pay a lot of money to learn the same thing.

Pretty clever I think, if I do say so myself.

Apparently. I am the only one who thinks so and says so. Everyone here watching me work, have no idea what I’m doing. but they keep an eye on me, just the same.

I also take a risk and follow a hunch and prepare a line blend in a series of 5 simple steps that I think will show some worthwhile result using this material as a body ingredient, based on my research on similar materials that I’ve worked with back at home. I’m guessing that it will be nice in a wood firing, but I’ll never know, as I only have sufficient material crushed and ground to made these few basic tests for the gas firing coming up. There isn’t a wood firing due at the moment.

I used a bisqueted test tile that I have brought with me from Australia in my suitcase to do such a test if necessary. I’m glad that I did, as there is no time to make one now and get it through the next bisque in time. I decide that I will only do the first three line blends on this occasion, as the last line will be too siliceous to tell us much about a stone like this one. Or so I think. I decide to use the remaining material to make the body line blend of 5% increments.

The next day, the bisque firing is unpacked and I start to glaze my work.

I get all my work glazed and fettled and out into the sun to help it dry out by early afternoon. The smaller and lighter of my bowls are quite delicate and thinly potted. So I can only afford to swipe them through the glaze in one second, so as not to saturate them. Otherwise the glaze will start to run off before it dries. I like to glaze all in one motion if I can, but these pots won’t have sufficient glaze on them to develop any depth of colour. So I decide to partially dry them and give them a second dip to create a thicker glaze coating. This carries a risk of causing pin holing and crawling, but I weigh up the options and decide to take the risk.

I could choose to spray on a thicker coat, and that would work better, just as the ancient Chinese did a millennium ago, but I’m not from around here and don’t know if there is a spray gun available. There certainly is a compressor, as I’ve already used this once before to blow the dust of my bisque ware. However, I don’t want to outstay my welcome, by constantly bothering the staff, who are always busy, by asking questions, unless it is absolutely necessary. Of course I am incapable of asking any question directly. I involves the use of the translation app on our phones. It’s a slow process and takes up their time typing out questions and answers with one finger on the tiny virtual key pad.

There is a change in this regard this year. I’m asked to down load a new language app onto my phone. This is a new Korean developed translation app, and every one here is using it. It is specifically built to translate Korean. It handles spoken word input too, which speeds things up. There is a little hick-up here with this. My Australia Post prepaid travel SIM card doesn’t handle data. Only calls and texts. Data packs can be purchased for other countries, but not Korea at this stage. So it turns out that I can only use the ‘Papago’ Korean translation app. when i have WiFi service to log into. That really limits where I can use it.

The standard porcelain glaze that they have developed here looks to be made using some sort of ash, as it has a fine grey cast to it and a infinitely fine dark speckle in the dried surface. It just looks like an ash glaze. I can’t justify that opinion any more than that. The next time My Jung, The Director of the Museum passes by, I have my question already typed out on the phone. “Is this glaze made with ash?”. He responds to me in English, “tree ash?”, I respond “yes, tree ash!”. He indicates to follow him into the next work area. I haven’t spent much time in here at all. I have only just glanced as I passed. I have had no business to be in here. I try not to cause any trouble as a guest. A position that I am very grateful to be in.

Mr Jung takes me to the ash preparation area. There are a series of very large tubs where ash is washed and sieved, then left to settle. In the settling tank, there is a rope suspended in the water. I must look puzzled, as Mr Jung the word in English, “magnet”. He shows me this by lifting it out by its rope and sticking it to the metal floor grating, which he demonstrates, he can now lift up out of the drain, just by the power of the magnetism. The big round magnet must be very powerful. He takes the magnet to the sink and washes it, and to my surprise, it is not big and round at all, but narrow and skinny. It was clustered with irony material stuck to it. I don’t know where all this iron came from, perhaps they burn the organics in a steel furnace?

The cleaned magnet after washing off all the irony ash particles.

Mr Jung then takes me to the glaze store room, where he shows me the working stock of dried ash that they make here. There is ash made from all sorts of plants. Mixed tree ash, Pine ash, chilli plant ash, chrysanthemum ash, ginkgo ash, even calendar flower ash! I’m stunned. So much work! I know what I’m looking at, because we burn plant material to create ash back home and sieve it and dry it. But not on this scale. I guess that it helps if you have a staff of 12 to help you get everything done. The biggest problem that Janine and I face, is that we are trying to do everything ourselves. We are getting older and not surprisingly, we get tired.

I wouldn’t mind a staff of 12 to help get things done. Not too sure how we would pay them though? Actually, just a part time staff of one would be nice.

My glazed and fettled pots are now packed into the glaze kiln. They will be committed to the fire tomorrow in a 12 to 13 hour reduction firing to 1260oC. I’ll have to just sit it out and wait-n-see.

Sericite Journal Two – 5 More Stones

Posted on 02/06/2019 by hotnsticky

Sericite Journal 2 – 5 More Stones

I arrive in Chuncheon from Seoul by bus and I am met at the coach terminal by my friend Mr Jung Do Sub, the Director of the Yanggu PorcelaIn Museum and Research Centre. He takes me to dinner and then home where I will be staying in his studio, attached to his house.

It’s a stunning new architectural space, it is so new that he is still working on it. Brutal, modernist, bare cast concrete on the inside, with a recycled brick cladding on the outside, heaps of double glazed glass facing the southern sun. (This is the northern hemisphere.) The sun comes right in onto the polished concrete floor. The cast concrete walls and roof are over 500 mms thick. I suspect that a lot of this thickness is taken up with some substantial insulation, as it hits minus -30 oC here in winter.

The next day we drive to the Porcelain Centre, where I start work immediately on getting things ready to make some work.

There are a number of sericite porcelain bodies here for me to choose from. The number has increased since I was last here. There are two new ones that I want to try out. When I visit the clay processing facility a few hundred metres away from the Museum. I see one of the new raw materials, the whitest sample, revealed from under a green tarpaulin, just outside the clay stockpile shed. It is actually off-white, but quite pale looking when compared to the standard local sericite that is mined near by. However, when this new white material it is crushed and milled, the whitish raw material in the wet plastic state becomes somewhat darker. This is usual with clays and I’m used to it. It becomes almost a pale khaki, buff beige colour, whereas the local sericite which is slightly greyish white when raw, becomes whiter when wet?

After stiffening, the resulting plastic pugged clay is mid khaki colour. I’m surprised to see that the fired sample from the reduction kiln comes out very pale grey from under the local standard pale celadon porcelain glaze. I’m intrigued.

There is a related material from the same pit that is slightly pinkish in the raw state, but processes to a pale apricot colour. A colour rather beautiful and very pleasing to my eye. This sericite body fires to almost the same degree of pale grey as the white sample, just a little bit darker, when reduction fired with the same base glaze. I’m quite surprised to see how similar they are after firing, just looking at the difference in the raw colour.

I get to try all 5 different sericite porcelain bodies over the next week or so of throwing and turning. The original local sericite that is mined just up the road here is highly vitreous at stoneware temperatures and is prone to slumping, even at the lower stoneware temperature of 1260oC. However, with a small addition of JinJu kaolinised sericite obtained from farther south, the resulting mixture throws very well and stands up to the 1260/1270oC stoneware reduction firing very well. I have discussed this beautiful porcelain body at length in previous posts, so won’t dwell on it again here.

My first mornings work involves me securing a wheel space in the crowded workshop. This is a community teaching facility open to the public. It’s mandate is to communicate the history and beauty of the local porcelain, and to offer that experience to the general public. I’m the intruder here, a foreign oddity, here for just a brief moment in the very long history of this place. So I know my place and ask permission before doing anything. I don’t speak the language here very well – if at all. I rely on the translation app on my phone to get me through, so I’m careful to be polite and not get in anyone’s way. I know that translation app software out-put is full of errors, so I’m careful. Some of the staff have slowly come to trust me with their very basic English as well. This is my 5th visit here, so I am getting to know everyone. Together we slowly and carefully explore a more friendly, trusting, and may I say ‘intimate’ way of communicating in this strange mix of two poorly pronounced and impoverished lexicons, extended by faulty software. What a mix! We manage to work our way through the errors, pitfalls and misunderstandings. Trust and friendship slowly develops. I’ve come to really like and trust these wonderful people. I’m so lucky.

Next, I have to source some batts, get a few extrusions of this special local sericite porcelain body pugged and de-aired. Then I clean the wheel scrupulesly to make sure that there is no cross contamination of other clay fragments under the wheel head and in the edges of the tray. I don’t want to contaminate other peoples work with my experiments here when I toss my turnings into the recycling tubs.

I sort out my tools and start to work up a lump of this marvellously plastic wet mica rock dust. It’s so hard to believe that it is not clay. At least not as we are familiar with the term in Australia. This body might have 10% of Kaolin in it, but that is all. The kaolin is not there to add plasticity. I have used the ‘Jinju Kaolinised Sericite’ that has been added to this mix straight by itself 100% and it is rather floppy and ‘fat’. The Bangsan sericite is plastic enough without it. What the Jinju material offers is not plasticity, but a slightly higher alumina content to increase its firing range.

An aside: Before I left home to come here I packed up three pots to donate to the Porcelain Museum. Pots that I made over the previous 6 months since my last visit here. I made these pots from stones that I collected myself, directly from out of the ground here. I had the resulting powder analysed and it contained only sericite and silica, so I know what authentic, pure sericite mica is like to throw with on the wheel. It can be amazingly plastic. This isn’t always the case though. The sericite that I collected from the ancient and abandoned sericite mine on Tregonning Hill In Cornwall was almost totally non-plastic, As was the siliceous sericite that I collected from the top of Sarri Mountain near Yeoju, here in Korea. The most plastic sericite that I have ever encountered was from Cheongsong in the south of Korea. A strange place, but marvellous clay. It is a pity that it is totally unavailable for foreigners to access due to the difficult personality issues of the manager of the site.

I should point out though that these most plastic Korean bodies are not the whitest. Surprise, surprise there! The whitest sericite is probably the extremely expensive ultra-white special grade of hand sorted Chinese sericite from China, near Jingdezhen. This ‘sericite’ is very hard to get, and not just because of its extremely high price. Following that is the highest white grade ‘Gao Bai Neantu’, version of Jingdezhen porcelain. It is very good, as is the hand-sorted white Amakusa sericite stone body from Arita, but the Amukusa sericite body is not anywhere near as plastic and also a little tricky to glaze fire due to its very high silica content.

Note to self: try a blend of Amakusa white with Bangsan cream. That would be an unholy pairing from Hell! Possibly considered a cultural crime, due to their difficult historical legacies, but it might work well? Each mitigating the short comings of the other. I just might try it in secret at home, where no one will be offended.

To return to my experiences here at Bangsan.

I only get to start throwing by 11.00 am. I begin by making the clay ‘chucks’ that I know I will need tomorrow when my pots are stiff enough to turn their bases. A ‘Chuck’ is a hollow cone shape of fairly thickly potted clay. This is used to support the delicate rims of the pots while they are having their bases ‘trimmed’ or ‘turned’. I throw these chucks on ‘batts’, flat circular wooden discs, so that when I pick them up off the potters wheel, there will be no warping. I want the chucks to be running true and perfectly round when I come to use them. Even so, I usually trim them and tidy them up when leather hard by trimming them with a sharp tool to ensure that they are as perfect as it is possible to get them. By lunch time I have my 4 chucks out in the sun and 3 larger sized bowls made as well.

In situations like this, I always start with the largest items first, then work my way down to the smallest pieces last. In this way, they are all ready for the kiln at the same time. No waiting for the bigger bowls to finish drying and holding everything up. My time here is limited. I only have a little over 2 weeks. I know from past experiences that I can get everything done in time if I follow my work schedule pretty precisely. 5 days throwing and turning, 2 days drying, then bisque firing and cooling, 2 days glazing and packing the glost kiln, one day firing, 2 days cooling and then unpacking and fly out home. It can be done! I know this, as it is my 5th visit here. In China, they don’t bisque fire, but spray the glaze on dry. They also fire over night, crash cool, by opening the door at top temperature and crash-cooling the kiln. They unpack and repack the next day. So a full cycle can be reduced to as little as just 8 days! If everything goes to schedule!

Once the main body of work is thrown, I get to play with the new sericite samples. The apricot coloured one is very nice to throw but suffers from a tendency to split and crack if they are too thick. Too thick in this extreme case is anything over 5mm! This body may be only suitable for very small, thinly potted items, or so it seems? I try my hand at the special school mix that they have developed here that is a mixture of three sericites. This body was developed to make it as forgiving and easy to used as is possible. It is used for all the classes. The Porcelain Museum and Research Centre also has a teaching facility where members of the community, school children, aged care groups, retirees and even squads of Army soldiers come in and learn a little bit about the history and culture of this part of Korea. As complete beginners, the work that they make is sometimes a little bit heavy and somewhat clumsy. The blended teaching clay body that they use for the students is designed to be easy to use, forgiving of lack of technique and indestructible in drying. It works remarkably well. I really like it. I’m not properly trained in porcelain. I’m entirely self taught, so this kind of clay is a great advantage to me as a ‘blow-hard, wanna-be’ potter of average skills and insights. However, I really like the challenge of the single stone varieties, even though they are harder to use. I don’t always get successful results, but I love to learn new ways of compensating for their – and my – short comings and developing new skills in coping with their individual difficulties and character. Giacometti once said that every failure brings you one step closer to success. There just might be some sort of truth in that. If you persist!

The teaching ‘clay’ mix of 3 sericites, appears to be a little bit speckly when I cut through it. I’ll wait to see how it fires. It just might have some iron specks? Although I don’t see any in the students fired works. Some of the students recognise me and remember me from my last few visits. They welcome me warmly. I’m impressed and thrilled to be included in their conversation, even if it is at the most basic of levels. One student even comes up to me and addresses me by name. He produces my book from behind his back and asks me to sign it for him.

The standard body, on the other hand, is rather fertile this time round, with some sort of organic growth in this well-aged sample. This is of course no problem and will fire out in the bisque.

I end my 5 days of throwing and turning with 45 finished pots from the 5 bodies. The apricot coloured clay continues to self destruct day by day afterwards, all I can do is sit and watch.

The pale coloured sericite body doesn’t like being wire cut, it stresses the clay particles too much and they tend to come apart as they dry out and start to shrink. It seems to lack cohesion? It doesn’t seem to be too much of a problem however, as the cracks are only surface splits and they are easily turned out. I have seen cracking just like this in Jingdezhen in their porcelain body, but in that case some batches of the clay are almost impossible to use without significant losses due to high rates of shrinkage cracking. Those cracks transferred all the way through the pot, so there was nothing that I could do to solve the problem. The Jingdezhen clay also has a tendency to chip and tear too, if turned anywhere near leather hard or softer. It benefits by being left a little bit longer to stiffen more, waiting until it is completely covered in the white drying rings, then it turns a lot easier and smoother. The whitest batch of the teaching mix is also prone to chipping when turned a little too soft. Just like the Amakusa porcelains from Arita.

The staff who work here are so professional. Their skill levels are very high. The Post-Grad students who study here after completing their Masters or PhD, are also extremely talented and dedicated. The quality of their work is exceptional after 3 to 5 years of post graduate specialisation in porcelain techniques in this place, they are very accomplished. I can’t impress anyone here with my amateurish skill levels. The thing I can impress is the clay. I use my initials and the Yanggu Seal to represent the workshop where my pieces are made. I impress the seal in to he clay. I love it. It’s such an ancient way of identifying pots, and this is a place with a very ancient tradition.

I am so lucky to be able to work here within this system of nurturing support – as a foreigner, an outsider. The Other! Not from here. These people embrace me and go to great lengths to engage with me and include me in their life, day to day. They include me in their lunch time meals in one of the local family kitchens each day. It has proven impossible for me to pay for even one of these meals. I offer, but no one will let me pay the bill. Everyone here is so open and generous. I wish that I could say the same for Australia’s treatment of refugees! People who really do need, comfort, help and support.

I make a suitable mess all over the floor, as the wheels here don’t have trays. I have no problem in throwing without a tray, I own a Japanese ‘Shimpo’ potters wheel at home, Although I don’t use it often, as I prefer to use the wooden kick wheel for most of my work. However, I have taught myself to use very little water when throwing and don’t ever seem to get any clay slip splatter on me or the floor and I never use a towel on my lap!

But trimming is another matter. I can’t stop the spirals going everywhere onto the floor as they effortlessly peel off from the razor sharp turning tool. I just get used to sweeping up at the end of the day. After I have turned the last of my pots, I sit down and go through them and sort out a few obvious faults, mostly hair line cracks or slight warping. Then I give a little time to examining the forms pretty closely, as well as the weight and balance.

I cull and I cull. Each day I re-examine my work and trash a few more. I go through the almost dried work and cull another half dozen that are not up to scratch. No point in firing something with a form that isn’t as perfect as you can make it to begin with. Ceramics is the ultimate pollution. It last forever. Everything that we know about ancient cultures was dug up as ceramics! It won’t get any better with glaze on it. I will go through them again just before packing the bisque, once they are all fully dried. I may cull a few more!

I’m down to thirty pieces now, some of my forms were not sufficiently pleasing and didn’t pass muster. I’d like to come away with a dozen good exhibitable pieces for showing eventually.

My throwing time here is now ended, and the less interesting period of packing the bisque and bisque firing is coming up. I will have some spare time, so will start to write all this up.

It is such a honour to be able to work here with these amazing sericite materials. To get this unique experience, and possibly get to take home a few exotic, one-off pieces of unique sericite porcelain. Pots with a history that goes back 700 years on this site.

Korean Sericite

Posted on 28/11/2018 by hotnsticky

A couple of months ago, Janine and I were lucky enough to be invited to Korea to speak at a Porcelain conference. We made the most of our opportunity and spent time in Seoul on our way to the conference to visit friends. I also made the most of this once-off, free travel opportunity, to re-visit one of the remote Sericite Porcelain Stone mining sites in Korea. This site dates back into the 1300’s. Sericite Porcelain has been mined there for over 700 years. I have visited this site before during my research trips, so I don’t need to put on my Indiana Jones hat and consult the ancient parchment map to get there. I know the way, at least I think that I do. I do have trouble convincing Janine of this though when we come to unexpected junctions in the track. We are tramping with our back-packs and although I have found my way here before, we just take the time to walk up a few dead ends into the hills, and retrace our steps a bit, before regaining the correct path. I managed to find my way here after the last conference and re-discover the site. I know that I can do it.

I must say that even though I’ve been here before, it’s amazing how easy it is to forget all the details of the way when you are out in the bush. I remember all the twists and turns in the various tracks that I need to follow to get there, but over time, things have change and the bush has grown over some landmarks, however, there are enough clues that come to mind at each change of direction, so that from time to time I recognise specific points along the way and I am convinced that I am still on the right path.

Eventually we find our way there. This ancient site is pretty damaged now, as the stone hasn’t been obtained from here for some time. I don’t know how long, but perhaps a couple of hundred years. However, there is still a small amount of the sericite embedded in the ground. There had been some heavy rain since I was last here and quite a few good large chunky samples have been exposed, so that I had no trouble filling my small pack with a couple of kilos of good clean samples. I hand pick the best and whitest bits from the dross that it is mixed with.

Now that I’m home and have caught up with all my other more pressing life events. I have time to deal with this most recent research. I set about crushing and grinding these new samples. Prior to this, I have only collected a few hundred grams of stone, purely for analysis and academic research. This time I have enough to be able to throw a few pots.

Seiveing the fines from the crusher, before going to the mill.

I put the stones through the jaw crusher and then the disc mill, then finally through the ball mill. If I had more to deal with I would put the slurry out on the drying bed. But as I only have a couple of kilos of material, I put in into the plaster drying tubs to stiffen up.

This turns out to be a really fantastically plastic sericite. I can wedge it up using spiral kneading straight from the drying tub with no ageing. Amazing for 100% milled stone. It seems that Sericite can be as plastic as any other ‘clay’ – even though it isn’t! (clay, that is).

I was very impressed with the plastic sericite from Cheongsong in south Korea. That was the best single stone porcelain that I had ever experienced up to that time. However, I wasn’t allowed to see the mine site or any of the processing that was carried out, so I couldn’t draw any conclusion, other than to say that the experience of throwing it was excellent.

This time I’m absolutely sure of what I have in my hands and on the wheel in front of me as I have collected it direct from the soil with my own hands and done all the processing myself. It is very slightly floppy on the wheel, but this is to be expected for a very pure primary ‘clay’ – ground stone actually, with no ageing. It certainly works infinitely better than an ‘Eckalite’ china clay body prepared under the same conditions. I’ve been there and done that.

I might just add here that I have a batch of ‘Eckalite’ kaolin based porcelain body that I made 25 years ago. It was un-usable straight from the pug at that time. Floppy and useless. However, it has been ageing in the cool dark clay store now for all this time and it is quite plastic to throw with now. As good as anything else on the market these days. I only wish that I had made 10 tonnes of the stuff back then. It would have been totally worth it. I don’t have 25 years left in me now, so it’s pointless speculating as to what might have been.

Any young potters out there interested in materials and porcelain. I’ve done the research for you. Make use of it.

I have no trouble throwing it on the wheel, it is smooth, fine and creamy and stands up well for small items, keeping its shape and not slumping. If only I had discovered this stuff 20 years ago too! It would be amazing by now.

As far as I can ascertain, from what I have been told through translation. Nobody has used this stone for a few hundred years. It has almost archaeological significance, embedded in its remote, hidden hillside home. No-one in Korea has taken an interest in it as far as I can tell. There is only myself and the local Porcelain Museum Director who seem to have any fascination for ancient sericite porcelain. You’d have to be mad to go about doing research like this strictly for the sake of academic interest. It appears that I am that person who is mad enough. So I am going to donate the best of any successful pots from the firing to the Porcelain Museum for their collection. It will be the only pot made from this stuff for the past few hundred years. Here’s hoping that the firing is a good one.

For an extensive discussion of Sericite porcelain, I refer the reader to my book ‘5 Stones’ which details my 16 year research into sericite porcelain around the world.

Moon Jars

Posted on 11/10/2018 by hotnsticky

While the long wood firing is in progress, there are simultaneous demonstrations of Moon Jar making by 3 exceptional makers. These mysterious white porcelain globes, have fascinated people for centuries, including potters in the West like Lucie Rie, and Bernard Leach.

There is Mr Cheol Shin, The traditional potter who we met a week ago in his workshop while he was wood firing. He is the maker who threw 1000 jars to learn how to make them well and with feeling. He tells us that it was only after that epic effort, was it that he felt confident that he could interpret this elusively simple form with sufficient understanding and confidence to do them justice. He is such a confident thrower, that he makes a dozen ‘halves’ on the first afternoon and then with time up his leave, he make 20 large dishes as well.

Mr Changhyeon Jeon, makes Moon Jars with a modern, humorous take on the ancient tradition. His work is great fun, although to my mind he seems to be taking the whole forum very seriously indeed rarely smiling. It seems to be Mr Cheol who is cracking all the jokes during the throwing demos. He is very relaxed and very confident. Mr Changhyeon, on the other hand works on quietly, being very careful and studious. He isn’t interested in volume, only making two jars in total, but each with applied sculptural additions. He has been developing a long series of moon jars with little whimsical horses, that climb up on his pieces and bite a chunk out of the rim. He was commissioned to make a number of pieces for the Korean Pyeongchang Winter Olympics last year. In that series, his horses broke off pieces of the rim of the jars and made skies, snow boards and a luge, then took off down the steep sides of the pots.

And then there is Mr Jung Hong Park, he makes Moon Jars with a very modern twist. For a start, he is working with black stained porcelain. His technique is to transfer high-definition, digital NASA images of the moon’s surface onto his forms. The detail is stunning and the time it takes to create the image is astonishing. I watched him work on and off for the 3 days and he managed to finish just a couple of square inches of the image. I congratulated him on the effort and he told me that this was only just the first layer of slip inlay, He will come back over it and inscribe another layer – or more. He works with ten different colours of slip, graduated from white to black, to get the fine-grained digital effect. He told me that he will spend up to 2 months to finish the image. Making the form for him is less important, it’s all about the totality of the enterprise, of which the image plays an important part. I’m impressed by his ability to concentrate and apply himself to this sustained project over such a long period of time.

After work, on the way to our accommodation, we pass the local co-op. The light is on and I can see a lady inside working. I go in and see what she is up to. There are a number of machines in there, some are clearly for working with chilis. There are machines specially for removing the seeds, others for course. medium and fine grinding the powder, depending on the desired outcome.

Tonight she is renting the oil processing machines. She has brought in her crop of ‘perilla’. I grow a variety of this plant at home myself. I call it ‘shiso’ and use it in salads, as a garnish and as an ingredient in pickles. It has a very distinctive flavour. The variety grown here is not the same and tastes similar but different. Here however they let it grow to full maturity and let it go to seed. The seeds are collected and pressed for their oil. They call it wild sesame here because the oil taste very similar to sesame oil, only milder and slightly sweeter. The mature leaves are used along with lettuce leaves to wrap the meat and pickles in the dish called ssambap.

We see a hedge of perilla growing around the edge of a ripe crop of rice being harvested, and some real sesame being dried on the pavement in the village along with other recently harvested crops of chilis and herbs spread out on tarps to dry. You don’t want to see a good bit of unused pavement being wasted on a nice sunny day in autumn.

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The Yanggu Porcelain Museum wood kiln firing

Posted on 30/09/2018 by hotnsticky

After we have spent out time in Seoul, we set off to travel up to the geographical centre of Korea, right up against the DMZ to a small town, or large village, called Bangsan. They have been mining porcelain stone here for centuries. The earliest written records of porcelain making in this valley date back to 1391. The ancient kiln site is now preserved under a roof, but still accessible. The site where the porcelain stone was stock piled and sorted ready for shipping to Seoul is still there, however, it has been desecrated by someone in living memory. I don’t know the exact details or circumstances, but what a shame. The Korea war raged up and down the country for a few years, back and forth. Maybe it was then? I don’t know.

There is a very ominous sign post on the banks of the river just 50 metres from the back entrance to the Porcelain Museum. It looks to me to be a warning sign about land mines. I get out my phone and use the translation app to read the text. Sure enough, it tells me that land mines can still be found here exposed after floods or washed down off the hills after heavy rains. It tells me how to identify them and not to touch them. As If! I can only suppose that some small kiddies might pick one up if un-accompanied? We are so lucky in Australia.

Our trip up here took us all day on 3 different busses and about 6 hours with waiting for connections. We have arrived early, before the forum is due to start, as we want to put pots in the long wood firing that will be held in conjunction with the conference. The Museum has a couple of 5 chamber traditional wood kilns that are fired a few times each year.

We pack all day and work into the night. One of the residents potters living in the student accommodation village ‘Daewoong’ is in charge and is assisted by a visiting potter from Poland ‘Gosia’. Not her full name, but one that she feels that we can pronounce. The firing will go for 100 hours or 4 days, all through the forum and demonstration days.

On the days when we are not involved in the forum, we do a 6 hour shift in the stoking. Janine ends up getting in more time at the stoking than me, as I’m constantly involved with the translator and publisher, or if not with them I’m speaking at the forum. I turn up one day to find that it is a fully female crew on shift.

As the firing progresses on to the final stages and the side stoking of the 5 chambers.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the (Porcelain) Forum

Posted on 26/09/2018 by hotnsticky

We are spending a few days in Seoul to do a little cultural sightseeing, visiting some of the Art Galleries and Museums, and searching out some interesting shops and small private galleries that show a range of hand-made objects, and not just ceramics.

It’s always great to be in a very different place and experience different cultures first hand. We are here alone without any real Korean language skills, just following our noses I can’t help but notice as we walk to the station that they seem to have chosen one of the most expensive way to wash their high-rise windows.

Two large cranes for a day, a Sunday at that, must cost a small fortune?

I’m more accustomed to seeing blokes abseil down the glass fronts of these big buildings, or stand in a mechanical hoist that is lowered down from the roof.

As we approach the station we see the first of the first of what is going to be a very common sight over the next few weeks. People make use of every space to dry their autumn harvest. In this case Chilis, and this is in the middle of the city of Seoul. Every spare bit of space is utilised.

We are very lucky to discover a very nice small shop that sells handmade ‘Jogakbo’ Korean patchwork fabrics and Korean paper lamps. We spend half an hour in there even though the shop is quite small. It has a lot of very interesting small things stashed away in intriguing little nooks and crannies. We really enjoy the paper cut-out lanterns, lamp shades and wall installations.

Their patchwork seems to feature a lot of pastel colours and at times some very bright colours, but I’m rather drawn to the most simple unbleached, off-white, hemp and ramie fibre fabrics. Simple and restrained, they speak to me of tranquility, even though the surface is intrinsically busy. I see parallels in my life in this material. I’d love a large, wall-sized piece, but they are too expensive.

We settle on a couple of small things that are more in tune with our budget. One in pastels and another in a very restrained, if somewhat Piet Mondrianish style.

We dine in a little cafe just down a lane, not too far from our hotel. It offers just about the best hand-made, small production, Indian Pale Ale that I have ever tasted, and it’s made locally too! Sweet, sour, bitter and spritzig, with wonderful fruity hops. The hops are so lively, that I suspect that it has been double hopped, late in the ferment. I don’t know much about beer making, although I do make beer at home myself, but I’m a complete amateur and just use a ‘Coopers’ kit. However, my son Geordie is right into brewing his own mash from basic grains, as is my friend David in Wales. He even grows his own hops in his garden.

See,; ‘From Side-stoking in Stoke to Wwoof-ing in Wales’, on this blog a few weeks back.

For the rest of our trip here we only drink Fermented white rice wine, soju or whatever local Korean beer there is in the little village cafes that we frequent. Although when I take my friends Jun Beom and his wife out to lunch, he chooses us a bottle of soju made from sweet potatoes. A first time for me. Not that different in flavour from the rice originated equivalent. Or so it seems to my uninitiated taste buds.

The next two days are spent with our friend Miss Kang, she is only available on weekends now, since she got a full time job. We are lucky that she has the time to spare to see us. I am eternally grateful to her for being my translator and driver a few years ago. She was fantastic in that role. We have continued to keep in touch and are now friends. This is the 4th time that I have visited Korea and managed to catch up with her.

She drives us to Icheon a few hours away to visit a common friend and see his new gallery. Icheon is a pottery town. It seems to be almost exclusively involved in the business of making and selling pots. After lunch we go for a walk to visit a few of the other workshops and galleries. There is a small ceramic festival on today in a new part of town where a new pottery suburb has been built. It’s so new that not all the streets are tar sealed yet and not all the allotments have been fully developed. The festival/ street party is to get the community involved and make a bit of an advertising splash. As this area is so new that they need to make themselves and their whereabouts known to the wider community.

Miss Kang takes us to one gallery/workshop where the owners name is ‘Mium’. They have built their workshop and gallery as a square shape with a square courtyard in the centre, with square windows. Miss Kang explains to Janine, using her phone, that the Korean letter ‘☐‘ is a plain consonant and is pronounced ‘mieun’, so they have used this as a central motif, not only in their work, but also in the design of their workshop.

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Next, we are taken to a Master Moonjar Maker. He has a fantastic workshop and gallery too. He is firing his wood kiln today. We can see this from afar, as it is very smokey. We are introduced, and it is expained that we are here to take part in the Yanggu Porcelain Museum, Special Annual Porcelain Forum. The potter, Cheol Shin, looks amazed for a second, then shakes my hand. He tells me, through translation, that he is very pleased to meet me, and knows that I am coming to Korea, because he will be one of the speakers /demonstrators at that forum too. What an amazing piece of synchronicity! He is a really nice guy, so friendly, but without Miss Kang and Jun Beom to help us, we wouldn’t know.

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Apparently, he made 1000 large Moonjars, before he was prepared to call himself ‘Master’. I believe that he is certainly entitled to give himself that title now.

Next, Miss Kang and Jun Beom take us to the local HaeJu Ceramic Museum. We meet the Director, Mr KiHwan Um. He seems a rather eccentric kind of fellow. I like him. After some polite social introductions and an exchange of name cards, an explanation of our mission here and my past research, he shows us around and gives us a special personal tour of the exhibits, but more importantly, the stock rooms. There are rows and rows of old and new pots. He just happens to have a collection of Song dynasty pots in his collection. Amazingly, we are expected to handle them and comment.

We end our tour in the international section. He asks if I have any images of my work with me. I regret that I don’t, as I wasn’t aware that I’d be coming here, this is just a fluke meeting. I do have a few images on my phone though. I show him what I have of my show at Watters Gallery last year. I am suprized when he asked me, through Miss Kang, if he can obtain one of my Australian Native single-stone porcelain bowls for the Museum. I’m flattered.

Before we leave Icheon, we bump into a couple of Australians, Tony and Gail, who have come here to do a week-long, hands-on workshop in Onggi making. There are apparently 5 Australians here for the workshop. Lucky them.

I love Korea. I am always happy here. We’ve only just arrived and I havent even left yet, but I’m already thinking of ways to come back. It’s a funny thing.

Korea is such a great place

Posted on 23/09/2018 by hotnsticky

Janine and I have been invited back to Korea. I have been here several times to do research into Sericite porcelain. I was invited last year to give the Key Note address to the first International Porcelain Conference, along with other speakers from Japan and China, as well as local Korean presenters.

I have spent all my life researching the use of local stones and other endemic materials for use in ceramics. A somewhat weird but very interesting and rewarding hobby. I have spent the best part of the last 20 years specialising in research into the use of Sericite in single stone porcelain bodies. That research got me the guernsey to last years conference. While I was there, I gave a copy of my latest book ‘5 Stones’ to the director of the Porcelain Museum and Research Centre. It turned out to be a very rewarding gift, as Mr Jung, the Director of the Museum must have been impressed, he invited me back again this year to speak about the book.

The Yanggu Porcelain Museum and Research Centre together with sponsorship from the Yanggu Gangwondo Min Ilbo Daily Newspaper have bought the rights to translate and publish the book in Korea. We get free return tickets and an advance royalty so that we can meet with the translator and publisher to set out the ‘tone’ and final content of the Korean edition. The book is about my 15 year research in 5 countries investigating endemic sericite porcelain and its history over a thousand-year period.

The story takes place back and forth between China, Korea, Japan, the UK and Australia with plenty of asides and digressions as I blunder about like the proverbial bull in the China shop smashing my way through cultural niceties and taboos with some incompetence and plenty of ignorance. It’s not so much a scholarly work as a light-weight travel journal. I’m not too sure what the translator will make of the puns, ceramic in-jokes and Australian/Western cultural references. I have already done a Korean-sensitive re-write and edit to make it specifically more appropriate to a Korean reader. As it stood in the original edition, about a third of the book took place in Korea, as Korea is such a culturally fertile place for porcelain with its extensive ceramic history.

I was so lucky to have all the stars align for me a few years ago when I first decided to go to Korea and try my luck in finding a few sites where porcelain had been independently invented and developed locally. I couldn’t have been luckier as it turned out. One of my past students from the Art School, ‘Clauda’, has now become a very popular teacher herself and just happened to have a Korean student in her class. When she heard that I was planning a research trip to Korea, she asked her student ‘Jane’ if she had any contacts that might be helpful to me. It just so happened that Jane’s brother is a potter in Korea. He invited me to visit him and offered me work space in his studio. He also knew an under-employed ex-employee/friend who could speak good English and was interested in a temporary job as my driver and translator.

It couldn’t have worked out better. I was beyond lucky. Miss Kang turned out to be the most amazing person. Creative, enthusiastic, engaged, interested and as a ceramic graduate, knew enough about my interests to make excellent decisions and able to do research into each topic that I mentioned in our conversation as we drove about the country. I found her to be very quiet and reserved at first. Very measured in all her conversation. However, over the first few days of being crammed together in her small car, we developed a working relationship that turned out to be very productive.

As it turned out, my two-day offer of work organically developed into a very long road trip that lasted a couple of weeks and covered a lot of the county, as Miss Kang followed up leads on her phone, ‘googling’ and ‘Navering’ various locations and key words. Initially, she had no knowledge of sericite or single stone porcelain. Her knowledge was all of contemporary Korean ceramics. Together we learnt many things about Korean historical porcelain and its development. We discovered several historical porcelain stone sites and were able to collect a lot of samples for me to post back to Australia for analysis.

I had initially offered her this small job to drive me from near Seoul, down to the south of the country to visit an ancient porcelain site, stay over night and then she would return home, leaving me there to do research. I was to meet up with another Korean potter, Mr Ji, a contact that I had made remotely, by email, from Australia. Mr Ji lived locally, and it was he who was to take me to another site and so on, following whatever leads I could find. It was my intension to do all this other follow-on research by public transport. However, Miss Kang became interested in the detective work of the research and stayed on for the duration of where-ever the leads took me. I couldn’t have been more fortunate. She turned out to be one of the most resourceful people I have ever worked with. I couldn’t have written the Korean chapters of the book without her research.

Through this chain of fortuitous events, my book ‘5 Stones’ became a reality along with my exhibition at Watters Gallery of my porcelain. So here we are in Korea again for the 5th time. We have been given our return air fares to make another presentation at this years porcelain forum, meet the people involved in the funding and production of the book. Work with the translator, catch up with Mr Jung in Yanggu, take part in an extended wood firing in the Porcelain Centres traditional 5 chambered wood kiln, then also spend a weekend with Miss Kang in Seoul, as she has now become a good friend and we couldn’t visit Korea these days without taking time to catch up with her.

Korea is such a great place for me to be.

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