Egyptian Paste

Egyptian Paste/Faience - Drying

Egyptian Paste after the firing (right one has gold luster too)

About 2 years ago in my Art of Ancient Egypt class I did a research project on a Faience amulet from Ancient Egypt.  Although the project was meant to be a simple 3 page worksheet: what is it... where is it from... what is it made of... etc.  I turned in a 12 page research project, most of which consisted of 6 pages breaking down the chemical components of the material of Egyptian Faience.  Ancient Egyptian Faience is not homogenous, there are many different types including glass Faience, and a later form with the addition of more clay and sand enabling craftsman to actually throw pots with it. But this did not happen til the Greco-Roman period. The traditional forms of Faience (what we now call Egyptian paste) had very little clay content, and only about 10% fine sand to help the material hold its structure. 

It is a self-glazing material.  Despite what a lot of archaeologists and Egyptologists say, it is not glazed ceramic, a more apt description would be to simply call it glaze, all by itself.  Essentially it is an alkali based glaze.  As it dries the salt (alkali) migrates to the surface of the piece. When it fires the colorant (most often either copper carbonate or cobalt oxide) are drawn to the surface as well and flux with the alkali to create the hard outer shell.

Although we do not have the ancient recipes, there are a number of recipes available online that can duplicate it pretty well.  I got mine from Robin Hopper's book The Ceramic Spectrum.

I had seen many amulets and bowls in Egyptian Faience in my research so I made a bunch of shapes: hippos, scarabs and small press-molded bowls.  I then painted manganese dioxide on the outside of the dried pieces not exactly knowing how it would react, but it fluxed right along with the alkali and the copper.  The Egyptian paste is fired to between cone 012-08 (different recipes call for different temperatures)

On some of the pieces I added gold luster and fired again to cone 018, also as an experiment. It worked beautifully!

Egypt-Ware... It Emerges.

Jan 29, 2011 We Give Each Other Courage

The Egypt-ware has made its final journey through its 5th firing (should have been 4, but had some problems).

There are over 30 pieces, some consisting of groupings of 2 to 7 pots within each of those "pieces".  It was a long and laborious project, but worth every minute, and worth all the blood (litterally), sweat and tears that went into it.

Along with this project, I was also able to get a new and official website launched with fantastic professional photos (www.genevamillion.com).  The photos were taken by Cap Prince, who did a wonderful job, but you can see that for yourself.

The new job at hand is compiling this all into a cohesive portfolio for Graduate Schools, and hoping it's suitable and relevant enough that I'll get in (somewhere!).  As far as I'm concerned this subject is amazingly important to the world right now.  I just hope other people see it the same way...

Jan 30, 2011 Peaceful Revolution (Detail)

Feb 3, 2011 Bringing People Together

Feb 4, 2011 A Day of Departure (Detail)

Artist Statement

I have spent years devoted to the study of the ceramic craft in its historic applications. I see the use of clay as a medium as having its own symbolic meaning; the idea of creating something from nothing, the forming of a vessel of life from a mound of dirt and filling it with life.  Images and concepts seen in Ancient Egypt have been the basis for my research both academically and in my art.

My ceramic work uses historic ceramic forms, technology, and pottery representing ‘living Hieroglyphs’ to tell the stories of Egypt.  My work parallels Egypt’s Ancient Intermediate periods, or times of disunion and chaos, with their current conflicts. This comparison is done through the act of layering, and multiple firings. Each work reveals layers of history, each building on top of the other, growing from the previous, changing yet remaining inevitably the same.

Egypt-Ware Round #1...

 This new series of work has been quite the learning experience. First I thought three firings was a lot.  Then I came to learn that these decals that I printed and fired on at cone 018 didn't fully adhere to the glaze.  This was partially my fault.  I really like my glazes to be more semi-matte or sometimes possibly semi-gloss, but I don't really like high gloss glazes too often because it sacrifices the detail and dimension of the form.  Anyway, the problem with this is that the decals don't flux as well into semi-matte glazes as they do into glossy ones.

 I had hoped to be able to fire the decal and the gold luster in one firing, so that I could eliminate the need for a fourth firing, but it looks like this won't be possible.  I was informed that the decals will need to be fired higher: up to 01 or even 1.  But this will definitely burn out the gold luster, which means that it will need to be reapplied (at $30 an ounce) and refired at cone 018.  Oh boy! Definitely a learning experience.  But, that's what clay is all about.  And even though the decal didn't completely adhere on this round, it still looks amazing!

I also realized how well the decal shows up on darker surfaces, which was something I was not expecting either, and how it doesn't show up quite so well on red and lighter brown surfaces.  It was also great to learn that the gold didn't work quite as well on top of the decal as it did directly on top of the glazed surface.  I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the fact that the iron in the decal didn't completely flux or what, but it's still great information to store away for later, and experiment with again.

So, despite some of the little mistakes that occurred on this round, I'd say overall it was a successful venture.  I look forward to exploring this process on the new clays I just purchased.  There is also much more news to cover in Egypt, historic and modern.  And it might be a good idea to create a glossy clear glaze in the near future as well.

Layers of History - Making and Applying custom decals

 I am now on the third "layer" of these new Egyptian History/politics inspired pieces.  The first was the Slip-Inlay, and underglaze.  Then, in the last step I applied multiple glazes to each piece, at least 2, sometimes 3 or 4 glazes per piece.  This step actually had me thoroughly stressed out, because, although I do perform glaze tests, I usually don't test how glazes layer and mix with others.  I was also playing with three different types of clay on this round: Manganese, Porcelain and B-Mix with sand, both thrown and slip cast.  The way the glazes responded in all these different factors was unknown to me until I unloaded the kiln.  Thankfully they all came out pretty great, the weird color combinations I had tried, worked well together.

The next step was now applying decals that I printed from the UCB Studio's HP Laserjet.  There really is nothing special about this printer, only that HP laserjets toner has iron in it. 

I started by scanning in Tweets and images from a great book called "Tweets from Tahrir" as well as finding some great photos online from the Egyptian revolution and aftermath.  I positioned them on an 8.5x11" art board in Photoshop and kept in mind the size for the majority of my pieces.  I was able to fit everything for 20 pieces onto 5 decal papers.  Everything that is scanned or taken from the internet needs to be converted to B/W and made high contrast before it is printed onto the paper.

Applying it is simple too.  If you have done this with commercial decals, I'm not sure how similar or different it is, having never used them before. 
You'll need a shallow bowl with water, a sponge, and some kind of card, or hard edge to remove the bubbles.

1. Cut the decal as close to the image as possible with scissors or a blade
2. Submerge it in the water, and let it soak for a few minutes.  You'll know it's done when the decal image starts to slide off the paper backing.
3. Keep the decal image and paper together and gently remove them from the water.
4. Slowly slide the decal image off of the paper and onto your glazed ceramic surface.
5. Use the sponge to softly push it down, from the middle towards the outside of the image.  And do the same with the hard edge or card to remove all bubbles.
6. Then fire the piece to Cone 018 - the iron will flux into your already glazed piece and voila! You have a dark sepia-like image of your custom made decal.

1 bag of clay...

Not bad for a days work...

Today I played with a new clay (for me), Navajo wheel, which I picked up at Clay Planet last weekend. I sat down and threw one whole bag, and absolutely loved it. Very workable and a beautiful color. Can't wait to see how it reacts to my glazes and the firing.

Slip Inlay and Sgraffito - Hieroglyphs

Hieroglyphs applied with slip inlay - in greenware state

One of the many decorating techniques that I learned at the fabulous San Jose City College was Slip Inlay.  This was actually courtesy of the wonderful (and late) Julia Terr. She was a visiting artist at SJCC and enlightened our class with her techniques in throwing and decorating.  This included: goblets and pitchers, glazes and, of course, slip inlay.

I became fascinated by her methods and decided to explore some of her techniques in my own work.  I made some of my own style of goblets (as seen in the previous posting).  I also re-created the beautiful green glaze, which she supplied the recipe for (and which was also my first foray into glaze making).  And I explored slip inlay.  Of course at SJCC we were somewhat limited by the slips, having only black, white, blue and green.  However, here at UC Berkeley we are blessed to have a wide array of colored slips.  This includes metallic colored slips (which I prefer due to the sheen produced in Mid – High range firing) as well as those colored by stains. 

The image above shows greenware bowls, and one cup that have been decorated using the metallic slips: Cobalt Oxide, Manganese Dioxide, Red Iron Oxide, Black Copper Oxide, and Rutile Oxide.  Most of these bowls were thrown in Babu Porcelain and decorated with the Slip inlay method that I learned from Julia.  If you've never done it before this is how it is done:
1. use a needle or sgraffito tool to carve a pattern or image into the surface (pretty deep). 
2. Then fill it in with the slip with a large brush, you will need to apply multiple coats.  The slip is thick enough when you can no longer see the carved image through it. 
3. let it dry sufficiently, dry side of leather hard, almost bone dry.
4. Then scrape the slip off with a metal rib.  Some of the clay surface will come off too.  This is why the carving should be pretty deep.

On the last bowl I used the sgraffito method, with is even easier and can be used with slips, underglazes and glazes. I just painted a thick layer of the slip over the leather hard surface of the bowl.  Then used the sgraffito tool to draw and image into it, thereby carving away the slip and revealing the clay underneath. 

Egypt's modern Intermediate Period - through pottery (In progress)

The upcoming few posts will most likely be a series of in progress photos, thoughts, and comments...

Currently I'm still decorating greenware.  I've done some slip inlay and some underglaze painting on bone dry ware.  Basically, the idea is that this lowest layer will reflect the historical Egypt.  Nearly every piece features a phrase or set of words in Egyptian Hieroglyphs (I spent the last year learning to read and write Middle Egyptian).

After the bisque firing I will be layering multiple glazes on each piece.  Some areas will have transparent glazes and others more opaque glazes.  It's all experimentation at this point.  After the cone 6 glaze firing I'm going to apply decals of images from the January/February 2011 Egyptian Revolution and decals of actual Tweets that were posted during that time period and fire at 018 (The Tweets have been scanned from the book Tweets from Tahrir). 



One of the basic concepts is the element of communication: pottery to Tweets. Another is the element of weapons and parallels between historical events and those of the modern conflicts. History really does repeat itself.