... of our planet where ingredients are continually changing, adapting, crystallising or returning to liquid. The work on bodies and glazes starts in the clay mine when raw materials are judged according to how they suit the needs and whims of the moment, when they are chosen and extracted. Porcelain bodies for example comprise several types of kaolin whose properties complement each other, although in any mixture there is always a majority of kaolin from Beauvoir, in the centre of France. This particular kaolin is low in plasticity but is of the purest white colour and is resistant to all the firing and cooling cycles. Its lack of plasticity is compensated by adding a small amount of halloysite. When finely crushed this clay, which I now get from a forest in the Dordogne (in the south-west of France), becomes remarkably plastic and very strong. I get my feldspar from the Morvan (east central France), the Drome (south eastern France), Bavaria or Portugal; my silica comes from the Drome or the Vaucluse (both in south-east France).

Depending on the nature of the ingredients and the final aim, the materials are crushed, ground, sieved, allowed to settle and filter-pressed in a workshop equipped with crushers, Alshing ballmills, vibrating sieves and filter-presses. The resulting flat cakes then go to another workshop where they are mixed again in a kneading machine. A pugmill removes any air before the body is stored in a cellar and allowed to slowly mature .

After the clay is kneaded by hand, it is thrown in the oriental style, meaning that it is as close to its final shape as possible. Trimming is only done to obtain a perfect profile and to shape those parts that cannot be thrown : stem and base.

Preparing glazes, just like preparing bodies, is a question of raw materials which are for the most part found in the natural state or else refined either by nature or by man : stone, ash, clay, quarry fillers, marble grinding sludge. The recipes used are the result of a long experience which has allowed the artist to distance himself from theoretical, scientific formulae in favour of paying attention to the nature of the ingredients, their particle size, their history and especially to how they react in the firing process. Firing, and even more so cooling, protocols may appear complex. Their effects, however, reflect the simplicity found in natural phenomena such as volcanism and glaciation. It was in fact in the caldera of the Piton de la Fournaise volcano on Reunion Island, which we visited regularly over several years for a project, that I thought of most of the temperature curves used in the workshop today.

The present kiln is the seventeenth one that I have designed and built for my personal use; it is a successful gas-fired prototype which incorporates a supply of liquid during the firing to provide a steamy atmosphere or to bring about water-assisted reduction through the creation of hydrogen (cracking). A much smaller kiln, fired by electricity and liquid fuel, is controlled entirely by computer. It can, for example, determine precise crystallisation phases and, on test pieces, measure how the materials react during firing. The trial pieces are given the same attention as any others since I don't use test tiles; every piece, big or small, is both the trial and final piece.

The process starts then in the basement and quite often returns there since any fired piece which, after a couple of firings, doesn't live up to my hopes and expectations, ends up smashed and buried. The survivors head for the display room, where they wait for a connoisseur, a gallery-owner or a curator to take them down a different path to a new life.

© Copyright 2004 Jean Girel. All rights reserved. Any duplication, reproduction or distribution is prohibited.