A friend of mine gave me a bucket of stuff that was labeled spodumene when she retired from making pottery. The stuff looks like a gray talc -- I was suspicious of it and so piled up a teaspoon or so of it in the middle of this glaze catcher and fired it to cone 10 in oxidation. It's very brown and unlike what I hoped it would be.
I know that for awhile there were some high iron spodumenes going around. Could this be one of those? Any other ideas.
4 comments:
The stuff that you describe sounds like spodumene as we knew it about 10 years ago. When we ran out and bought a new bag (about 10 years ago), the new spodumene looked white and crystalline. They both performed the same in the glazes (c 10) that we mixed, that required spodumene - the melt and texture was the same, that is. The old, gray-ish talc actually gave a much nicer, warmer color when the glaze was used over porcelain or a white clay. Recently, we've used the glaze with the new "white" spod over a darker stoneware body with some nice warm results. Circumstantial evidence would say that the old spod was the iron bearing spodumene -- less refined than the one that seems to be widely available now - maybe?
I'm new to the clay blogging realm. ...nice pots and blog-
cheers!
G.L.
I agree, the stuff I used to love in the 70's was gray, and actually made the glaze a little foamy when added.
Here is a hyperlink to a description of the mineral (LiAlSi2 O6).
Could it be Amblygonite? Amblygonite is also called low melt Spodumene.
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