Very early in my clay journey, seeing my obsession with carving, my mentor predicted that one day, my working with porcelain seemed inevitable. Fast forward twenty some years, my clay has only gotten darker and groggier and my work extremely rustic and earthy with no scope for anything as pristine or perfect as porcelain.
Last month, at a friend’s recommendation, I started to hear Edmund De Waal’s book, The White Road, an intimate narrative history of porcelain where the author takes the reader on five different journeys tracing the history and drama, centered around the pursuit of the perfect white clay body, porcelain. It was a great studio listen. So much so that hearing him describe the beauty of porcelain with such passion, over and over made me long for that same experience. So today as part of my residency, I did just that. I threw porcelain for the first time! And how did I feel? Well I realized, that the passion the author felt for that pure white, creamy clay is exactly what I feel for my dark clay. I was like a chocolate lover choosing vanilla because I fell for the dreamy description of the flavor given by a vanilla lover. I think I prefer, the look, feel and even the mess left behind by my dark clay that resemble smears of melted chocolate as opposed to the yogurty look of porcelain. So is this the end of the white road then? Maybe not. After all, once in a while, I do enjoy a scoop of vanilla ice cream when paired with dark chocolate cake and hot fudge. So if my experiments with charcoal firing porcelain pieces turn out as promising, then maybe I will continue to go down that road from time to time.
