Le Veauthibault 2010 - making paperclay

When I was in France  last month I also made my own paperclay. As it is a bit messy I preferred to make it in France and not in my own tiny atelier. I had some pieces which were not suitable for firing after drying and kept those to make paperclay. Of course you can buy ready made paperclay, but this way you can reuse failed pieces (so long as they have not been fired)  and create something new with them. I do like working with paper clay and paper porcelain as it stronger due to the fibers.

The recipe is easy:

1 empty box for 6 eggs

750 grams of dry clay

0,5 liter of warm to hot water

Tear the box to small pieces and put in a bowl, add the hot water and mix well. 

Grind to dry clay to as fine a powder as possible. 

I just batched it with a rolling pin until it look like this:

Add the powder clay to the paper slush and mix well.
If you want you can add a stain at this point. In this case the clay is antracite clay so not much use to add a colorstain to it, but works well for porcelain and white clays.

Put all unto a slab of plaster (you can make this yourself or buy ready made from some DIY stores), which will suck out the moist. Leave it to dry and turn if need be.
I left mine to dry overnight and there was no need to turn, there will be if you leave it out in the sun.

Once it's dried to a consistency you are happy to work with kneed it and store it air tight.

Le Veauthibault 2010 - Paper Kiln

Today I want to share some more memories of my trip to France with you. 

The last full day we made a paper kiln and it was a lot of fun. 

Most of us had prepared a little bowl in the days before so they were dry when Friday came.  

We used a grill form an old BBQ as a base. We made a channel underneath to be able to add wood and fuel the fire. On top we constructed a basket in metal wire to hold the ceramics. 

We filled the basket with charcoal and the dry clay pieces.

We stacked wood we had collected on our walks around the basket.

We wrapped the wood with cardboard, leaving a hole for a chimney in the top.

Than followed 7 layers of clay slush and newspapers, one layer slush, one layer newspaper and so on.

The finished paper kiln with a cute chimney and holes either side to light the fire and add more wood.

What to do with the left over slush.....slush fight!

Watching the kiln shrink as the fire burns higher and higher,
we kept adding wood until is was well alight on all sides.

Well into the night we removed the paper surround,
the wood had burned away and all the charcoal is glowing.
This is good, we need much heat for long around the pieces.

In the morning we found it like this. Perfect result, only 2 bowls were broken,
most likely because there was air trapped in the clay.

These are the ones I made, I had added stripes in copper-oxide and a glaze.
For the glaze it had not been hot enough so that came off or 
it was because the glaze was too old and past it's sell-by-date.

Well hope you enjoyed our fun day too and maybe it will inspire you to make your own paper kiln.

Le Veauthibault 2010

Sunday the 5th of September we left with 3 cars and 1 van with 10 women and 1 dog from Belgium for 7 days to 

Le Veauthibault in France to create with clay, porcelain, silver(clay), glass, fimo, paint, paper, plaster and wood.

Below the view from my place in the atelier and impressions around the house. 

Usually I would go for a short walk in the morning, sometimes Thibault, the dog of the landlord would walk with me.

We had a real good time, the evening we filled with playing games, visiting the local wine farm or sitting around the fire watching stars. The landlord Jacques made our breakfast, lunch, dinner and entertained us with ghost stories in the cellar.

All in all I had a great time, created a lot of which I will share more later.