Like a thief in the night

No posts for over a week alas. Have had trouble connecting only to that site. I think it might have been some sort of local blacklisting of blogspot.com, but it all seems to have started again OK.

Good news and bad news.

Some of the Tang Lead green bottles shown in an earlier post have been admired so much by the workers, they have been souvenired while we were sleeping. A great compliment I guess from a ceramic factory, but I hope more don't disappear otherwise my display will be definitely minimal. We have also all had tools taken, also for souvenirs I guess, but yesterday Chris Staley had his watch taken from his workspace. The place is teeming with visitors wanting to have a go on a wheel, so it is like a trade show at times. Anyway the appropriate people were told. There had been a big group of highschool teenagers there in the morning. Then by magic at happy hour it was "found" in the recreation area.

I don't think it is dishonesty so much as curiosity. I had a pair of scissors walk as well.

Latest firing is ontrack, because using a high temp black glaze as one would use an oxide wash, has paid off and the insipid grey clay now looks animated.

Had our first day off last Thursday and went on a class trip to Chen Lu, a traditional mountain pottery area. First stop was a ceramic museum.

The Australasians

Chen Lu was medieval and picturesquely quaint in a third world industrial revolution kind of way.

Very much a working pottery town with heaps of coal and most buildings made of brick and retaining walls made from old saggars. The coal smoke haze was all pervading, as it is in most places we have been. Occasionally you can see stars at night

It rained all day for the first time since we arrived and the coolness was welcome. You quickly forget the smell of rain on dirt.

There was a feeding frenzy of potters in the seconds yard of a Sung and Ming repro factory. Small children would have been trampled to death.

Back at the tile factory, the wood kiln firing started last night at 10pm complete with cold beer and the ubiquitous string of double-happys for good luck.

Jxx