Adrienne Ashley Eliades

Major: Studio Art Minor : Psychology

University Honors with Honors in Studio Art

Supervisor: Mr. Aaron Wilcox

BLUE CLAY

The most important part of a ceramics education initially is not skill, but understanding the extensive history of the discipline, in order to understand classical ideals in making pots. Pottery making skills have been passed on through generations of European potters, who brought their expertise to the Carolinas in the eighteenth century. The natural clay deposits abundant in North Carolina’s piedmont region provided the catalyst for making the state a hub of pottery making. I sought to emulate the methods of the North Carolinian potters, by using the wild blue clay indigenous to the Wilmington area. I found that blue clay is more suited for making slip than throwing vessels because of its geographic location close to the coast. High in organic matter and sand, blue clay has inconsistencies that inhibit workability. Slip, or engobe, is a suspension of colored clay in water. It can change the whole dynamic of a vessel when applied to its surface. For my thesis, I formulated nine slip recipes, based on two white slip recipes, using the blue clay as a primary ingredient and a colorant. From the tests I developed a recipe that transformed the wares’ surface color to an iron rich vibrant orange when bisque fired, and to a rich brown or opalescent gray when salt fired. The recipe is ten percent ball clay, forty percent blue clay, twenty-five percent sodaspar, and twenty-five percent silica with an additional twenty percent blue clay added on top of the recipe as a colorant. I then applied it to my body of utilitarian wares and salt fired them to honor the North Carolina tradition.