Glazing

Finally onwards with glazing; I just started to glaze with small amounts. The colors will get more perspective though quantity, after more tiles are fired. 

The first set of glazed items waiting for the kiln.

Here is a link to Kursas Laiks´s (the newspaper who was here on Wednesday) article about the project:

http://rekurzeme.diena.lv/vietejas-zinas/aizputes-novada/foto-serde-gatavo-flizes-aizputes-pilsetas-centra-laukumam-60645?cp=1

Fixed wall!

There is only one bisque firing left, but what I am really glad about is that the wall got fixed
and evened out so the tiles can be fastened later on. Without this workmanship it would have been quite impossible, so I want to thank my sponsors A-J Energobūve SIA and TAPS SIA, two local companies from Aizpute that have fixed the wall and will put the tiles up to the wall. Their support is highly appreciated!

Before the wall surfaces were quite uneven; there were depth differences up to three-four centimeters because the concrete had been casted less precisely. Also the cracks in the wall got fixed too.

Yesterday there was a reporter making a surprise visit from a newspaper from Liepaja area, it should be out tomorrow on Friday. Let´s see if I can scan the article here somehow.

803

Today the was finally the last day of the actual making of the tiles, 803 hand made! At least.
Some of the tiles got broken on the way, but that is always inevitable. It took two and half weeks and three persons and it has been intensive and long days.

Krish and Anette came to try out tile making.

There was small step back with the glaze tests. Since Serde has only one kiln,  Aizpute´s Art School was kind enough to let me to fire the test tiles in theirs. Unfortunately with this 53 year old soviet miraclec the firing process is very difficult to control, so the results were more or less boiled. I wasn´t pleased with the colors anyway so I think I need to come up with some new ideas.
The glaze base i going to be this glossy white low fire glaze where I will mix in some pigments.
I´m not so huge fan of this earthy red-brown color of the clay.

Tomorrow I will go hiking with some others for three days, we will walk from Liethuania to Latvia around 70 km, so there will be a small vacation from the project. I can really feel it in my hands that they need some rest.

First Bisque!

Of course the round top loader isn´t optimal for firing square tiles but so what.

Yes, finally today the first tiles were bisque fired.

The drying process takes much more time than I would have thought, they need to be absolutely dry.

They dry without plastics in this old barn where the air is a bit humid and temperature low so they are left there for several days and in the final step they stay in a dryer over night.

While this has been waiting to happen we have made and finished up tiles, a lot. I have been too busy to write anything here, and anyways it´s about repeating the same phases over and over again.

All I can say is all the tiles will be done by the end of the week. Amazing. Still a lot of finishing work left to do, which takes as much time as the making of them.

I try soon to post here the final plan so you can all see how it will be, and there´s a revelation coming up, wait and see.

So tomorrow finally the glazing test are next on the line. I´m so well in the schedule that it almost makes me nervous.

The first set of fired tiles.. aren´t they beautiful?

More work

Cut tiles waiting for final treatment

Yesterday it was a new record on the amount of made tiles, 99! Today wasn´t that bad either.
I couldn´t have better assistants, it would not be possible to have everything going so well and with such a speed without them. Big up to Ance and Tiia!

After the tiles have dried to skin dry, they need to be cut. Of course before the bisque they need a sponge treatment as well.

Tiles drying. Some of them are turned around so the drying keeps even, to prevent bending.

I´m not so used to work with earthenware and this clay doesn´t even have any shamot in it.
The tiles need to be apparently very dry before firing, so it might take until weekend before we get the first firing going. We´ll see.

Tile after tile

It is going to be mostly tile pressing for a while now.
Today Ance´s sister Tiia joined to help and three of us made over 90 tiles today!
Amazing speed, it is very physical work. Soon are the first ones ready for bisque firing.

Fillin´ it

Ok! On Thursday pressing clay into molds started. The schedule is so far holding up pretty nicely.
As a first thing we moved to a bigger room to another workshop, as the molds were drying up with a fan-heater in the ceramic workshop.
This type of press mold technique is a new one to me so there was a little bit of learning.
Ugis Pucens did the wooden frames for the molds to get the right thickness on the tiles. He had used this technique before so he knew what he was talking about.

Because there are a lot of tiles to be made it is not possible to let the tiles dry in the molds, instead the clay needs to be removed shortly after the pressing is done. Two sides of the wooden frames are glued together, so the frames can be opened just pulling two corners apart. Quite easy.
Baby powder is also used on the surface of the mold to help to remove the clay.
It doesn´t  really matter how precise the molds are anyways, they tiles get hits because of all the handling, especially the edges. So thats why there are these 0,5 cm marginals on each corner, to be cut away after the clay has dried enough to have the edges as sharp as possible.

The clay needs to be hammered down so it fills all the details. This also requires a technique of it´s own so no gaps or wrinkles are left on the ready one. Because most of the molds were carved straight on the plaster as negatives, this was the first time to see most of the forms positive!
And it´s looking promising. Looking forward for the results of the glaze tests.

Clay & Factory

08.00 Tuesday morning there was a car waiting (organized kindly by the town of Aizpute), ready to drive us 150 km to get some clay materials from the last existing ceramic factory in Latvia.  

Keramika LV, which is located in Jelgava, wasn´t expecting us that early, so we had to sit in the sun for an hour and do some yoga moves.

We were such good customers that we got toured around the factory by the office manager. They asked if the clay was for our own use or for some camp.. Apparently private persons don´t come there often to buy so much clay. Here is the clay mining department with a grinder.

  

I asked if do they do other materials as well, like porcelaine. "This is not china.", he replied.
This is obviously a local factory for local clay.

Vacuum pressing machine

Glazing facilities

They do earthenware dishes and one of the biggest article is balsam bottles! Here´s some in front of a gas kiln. So while they were loading the car we went to pay. It took two people and 15 minutes to make the bill and then receipts, which I needed to sign in three copies. The transaction felt very official.
The rest of the day went by casting and fixing more molds. Some were left till Wednesday still, but we are getting there.

Mold making

I started to make the molds on Friday, and it was a very busy weekend. In the beginning I had to figure out how to transfer the sketches into three-dimensional forms and at the same time have the forms relating to eatch other in way that they would still have a uniform sense, so it took few molds to practise that. I have never managed to draw my ideas in a way that I could be content on the result, they need to exist as concrete objects that I can understand them and see and feel how they work.

The tile size is now 16,5 x 16,5 cm. The earhenware has a shrinkage percentage around 7 after firing, so you all can do the math.

Luckily on Monday I got wonderful Ance Ausmane to help me with the project! It is starting to feel like the goal is possible to achieve here..

Still four to go but I think they all will be done tomorrow.
Here are the ready ones drying in the sun, and it´s looking good.

Starting up with a ceramic mural

This will be the ´before´ photo.

I´m doing a two month A.I.R. here in SERDE recidencies and workshop center, located in the town of Aizpute, in Latvia.
On Thursday I got permission from the town officials to do a public art project to these concrete walls in the main street, Atmodas iela. At the moment there are some worn-out paintings which are going to be covered with hand-made ceramic tiles, to have ceramic mural panels. The town is supporting the project as they can.

The plan is to use the local clay; red-toned earthenware, press-molds and enkobis for colors.
I´ve been looking into some Latvian folklore symbols and used them as a starting point for abstraction, and from there started to develope the formal and visual themes. It is going to be geometric styled
relief tiles.

                                                                                              (tumblr)

So the meaning of this blog is to show and document the process. It is a tight schedule and ambitious plan, but I believe it´s possible to make it happen! The project is still developing, so more details later on.

I want to thank Arts Promotion Center Finland for support.