The idea behind Jasperware, which was also available in other colors such as lavender, black, pale green, and a darker blue was to have a high fire stoneware that needed no glazing so that the unusually colored clay body would not be covered up. The colored stoneware, was most often decorated only with white sprigs that nicely accented its rich hues. Sprigs are low relief images that are made with press molds, and can be almost anything from a decorative, floral border to miniature images of people. Simple geometric patterns are also popularly made into sprig molds so that patterns can easily and accurately be repeated.

For more information on Josiah Wedgwood you can look here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wedgwood_josiah.shtml

For more information on colored clay or sprigs look under ‘Ceramics’ on the menu above.

The other fact that I found out in the course of my research is that the beginning of a sulphide lies in making a small, low-relief (thin, raised) portrait called a cameo, out of porcelain clay. The incrustation or encrustation process began with a few slightly successful experiments in 1750 in Bohemia that have been lost, and was later perfected by the Frenchman, Monsieur de St. Amans, after several less successful attempts by his countrymen. The porcelain cameo was fired and cooled, before it was taken out of the kiln. Then the idea was to use the glass-blowing process to combine the porcelain cameo object with the glass. Making glass molten and firing porcelain until it is hard are very likely to happen at similar temperatures. Porcelain is one of the clays that has a high vitrification temperature. Vitrification is when a clay piece is fired until it becomes completely hard and is no longer porous.

The porcelain cameos were reheated to the needed temperature and placed inside an opening in a bubble of blown glass. In the course of closing the bubble while the glassblower sucked the air out of the pocket holding the clay object, there was a strong seal made between the porcelain cameo and the clear glass bubble. This merging process enclosed the white cameo completely inside the glass due to similarities in their chemical makeups. Some of the sulfides even had colored glass behind the cameo. To finish the process, the enclosed sulphide was then put inside another glass shape to make a vessel such as a cut glass tumbler, vase, perfume bottle, flask, plaque, paperweight, toy marble, etc. It took quite a lot of skill, and eventually the process was patented by a man in England named Apsley Pellatt who also wrote the original book (published in London in 1849) that Paul Jokelson found and which he used as a basis for his books on sulphides.

Some people were not able to figure out this patented process, although they liked the result. Therefore, a simpler process was used to try to achieve the same result, although it could not be done exactly. In this new process there was a mold in the shape of a cameo that was pressed into the glass and likely once cooled, the cavity was filled up with plaster of Paris that when hardened and glued onto the tumbler or other vessel resembled an original sulphide. These cheaper imitations were sold by some of their makers at a reduced price, since the substitutes were not so difficult to make. Perhaps, unfortunately, these counterfeits were also marketed by others as real sulphides at a higher rate.

If you would like to know a little more about sulphides, look in the menu above under Glass or Ceramics.

For more of her work, go here: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search?q=Adelaide+Alsop+Robineau&sortBy=Relevance&pageSize=0

She lived from 1865 to 1929 and was born in the state of Connecticut. Later on, she and her husband moved to New York, and had a ceramic studio built next to their house, out of which Robineau later taught. Her husband was a French ceramics expert, Samuel E. Robineau, who had been an editor of the magazine called Old China. She worked mostly with porcelain, sometimes decorating her pottery by precise carving of the clay, and she used crystalline glazes to finish many of her slip cast pieces. A slip cast piece is made by pouring liquid clay into a plaster mold, and crystalline glazes have patterns that are chemically configured so that crystals form on their surface.

Robineau started out as a china painter, and later learned to handle all stages of ceramic production. Part of her studies were completed at Alfred University in New York. She and her husband also published a periodical called Keramic Studio. It was printed from 1899 to 1919, and Robineau and other women contributed to it. Eventually she became the only editor.

The Smithsonian Institute has electronically archived issues of Keramic Studio, which can be found here: https://library.si.edu/digital-library/book/keramic-studio

You can visit Clay Carving to find more information.

The other type of quilling is done with porcupine quills, and it is a craft where the quills are sometimes dyed and arranged in different patterns. They can be sewed onto cloth, wrapped around objects such as handles, and become part of birch bark boxes. In 1840, making decorative seats for wooden chairs for the English market became popular among Micmac tribespeople who quilled. The above image is from https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/quillwork. It is captioned, “Mi’kmaq quillwork chair seat (courtesy Glenbow Museum/Canadian Ethnology Service, CMC).” I imagine hand/eye coordination is important in porcupine quilling as well as in paper quilling.

If you would like more information about either type of quilling, look at the menu above. Under ‘Nat. American Crafts’, you will see ‘Porcupine Quilling’. Under ‘Paper’, you will see ‘Paper Quilling’.

https://crazyhorsememorial.org/the-museums/the-indian-museum-of-north-america/

Unfortunately, I do not always remember what is demonstrated in front of me, but I was able to remember that the porcupine quills would sometimes be softened by placement in the mouth of the artist. I also remember that the quills were sometimes dyed in order to make them part of a design. I have a book called In the Spirit of Mother Earth: Nature in Native American Art that I found a little more information in and added a web page to this site, which can be found in the menu above under Nat. American Crafts and then Porcupine Quilling.

The sculpture of Crazy Horse is very much a work in progress, since more funds are needed in order to complete the sculpture as it was designed by the original sculptor, Korczak Ziolkowski. A non-profit was formed to help pay for the explosives and other things needed to complete the sculpture, but one year a $60,000 check was donated, and the weather made it so no sculpting could be done. Therefore, the check was used to build the museum. I think they really did a good job making the museum and filling it with artifacts. Also, funded by the non-profit is a college for Native Americans in the area. A medical school has been planned as well. Perhaps the family of Korczak Ziolkowski, who run the non-profit have determined that the funding contributed by visitors to the sculpture and the museum is of more value to the local Native Americans than the sculpture itself. Maybe they just want to see the job done right. I do not know. Perhaps they would like both things to happen. In looking online recently, I was able to see quite a bit of progress in Crazy Horse’s face on the sculpture.

An interesting article about some controversial opinions of the sculpture can be found here:

https://www.cnn.com/2012/11/05/us/crazy-horse-memorial/index.html

Anyway, when I started out in college, I was not sure what to do. I attended Henry Ford Community College in Dearborn, Michigan (now called Henry Ford College). When I was picking out my classes there, I included a ceramics class, because I thought it might be interesting. When I entered the ceramics studio, I was lucky enough to find a community. There were people who were attending college like me, straight out of high school. There were students who were quite a bit older, attending college classes to learn more about the art and craft of ceramics in order to increase their skills and bodies of work. There were also older people who just wanted to do ceramics as a hobby. One thing they all had in common was a desire to welcome others into their learning community.

The woman in charge of the ceramics curriculum for the college was named Kathy Dambach. She taught me a lot about how to be creative. I look back on my time at Henry Ford Community College with fondness. It was quite a change from my school days as a child. I was one of those kids who did not fit in well with the other kids. When I would be sent out after lunch for recess, I mostly just walked around, and I did not try asking the other children if I could play with them. I guess I was afraid that they would say no. Therefore, I was always on the outskirts. Some of the kids called me names while I was in school, so by the time I got to college, I was very happy to find people that wanted me to be a part of their learning community. We even had potluck lunches occasionally, and I remember having fun sharing each other’s food. I enjoyed learning about ceramics and the history of ceramics. I even enjoyed the two dimensional design class that I ended up taking to continue on with a degree in art.

The biggest stumbling block I had for the art degree was the drawing class that was required. Unfortunately, I found myself to be very self critical when trying to complete my drawing assignments, and I gave up too soon and dropped the class. I have since taken drawing classes, which I made it through (many years later), but I feel as though I still have a lot to learn about drawing. I did end up with a bachelor’s degree in Studio Art from Converse College (now called Converse University).

One thing I have learned how to do since my childhood is take delight in finding out more about art and craft processes. I find the steps behind the processes very interesting. That is why I have started to write this blog. I would like to share with other curious people what I have learned and what I am learning through my research.