We Love LUNA to the Moon-a

This is quite possibly the MOST BEAUTIFUL Stoneware Clay I've ever seen
BUT . . .

there is one, and ONLY One drawback.
SOME of those BEAUTIFUL black spots are . . . SHARP!

STONEWARE!?
If it’s possible to fall off the colored porcelain clay wagon, then we did just that . . . AGAIN. 
Only this time, we didn't even use our beloved porcelain.

A SIO-2 clay - We’re “Over the Moon-a” with LUNA speckled stoneware clay.

Wheel-throwing LUNA is a breeze!
She handles the curves nicely.
When utilizing the metal rim on this clay, it sounds as if you are trimming gravel!
It was very obvious to me why LUNA is called LUNA when my trimming tool hit the spinning leather hard clay.
WOW! I’m trimming a clay full of rocks, and when the tool hits some of these larger rocks - it leaves . . . craters!
It always takes me a long time to trim.
LUNA took a REAL long time to trim.
Now, if you don’t like a footring - that’s half the battle won right there.
We happen to like footrings, as they elevate the pot up off the surface they’ll be sitting on. It took a little adjusting to the craters, as I had to spot, pick out the larger minerals, and fill the crater with fresh, rock-free clay.
The rib tool, which usually smoothes the clay surface, in this case, picked up stray rocks, and dragged them around and around the pot!
O.K. So, not wanting a rough surface, I burnished the surface with a small, smooth glass mosaic tile.
How small? About 1/2” x 1/2”.
It worked!

But - time consuming.

Worth it, in my opinion.
If you like the rustic, earthy or folk art type pottery, this clay would not need as much finicky, persnickety, knit picking adjustments.
It’s those spots, I tell you. Worth every minute of persnickety. 

There is something that happened during this clay.
Something I did not expect to happen.
I found some artistic expression in bowls that wasn’t there before.
LUNA is described as an “artistic” clay, by the manufacturers.
IT IS an artistic clay.
Making bowls with Luna as I normally do - they were all recycled . . . by me.

WHY?

There was something I wasn’t getting. There was something missing, or something that needed to be to be added. My bowls were NOT ARTISTIC enough for the clay. 

I re-threw the bowls - one at a time, trying to figure out what was missing.
It was actually a new bowl shape that formed as I kept re-throwing them. 

I was throwing cereal bowls, and through a lot of trial, started throwing ARTISTIC cereal bowls. 

Bowls that I really wanted to embellish.

Did the clay do that for me?
I really believe LUNA gave me her two cents worth, and I am very grateful to her.
It will be interesting for me to see if I can carry the creativity I learned from LUNA over to my colored porcelain projects.

Just because we are colored porcelain clay ceramicists, I also colored a few strips of LUNA, and she handled it just fine. Since this clay is not white, but ivory in color, I had to stay away from colors that will turn ivory clay too muddy in color. Orange worked well. Ivory is a warm white.

The main photo of this blog is a balloon bowl created with long strips of LUNA draped over a balloon with attached buttons as well as four flowers carved at equal distances near the rim.
I did color some of the clay a pale orange.

LUNA clay contains 40% impalpable grog (0–0.2 mm). As they state on Sio-2 website - “This high-grog, fine-particle formulation provides a smooth, "buttery" feel while offering excellent stability, making it ideal for throwing and hand-building with minimal risk of cracking”.

With the fine grog and the minerals embedded in LUNA, attempting to carve this clay COULD be a problem. So . . . let’s give it a try to find out.
Constructing a hand-built balloon bowl, I decided to carve a couple flowers on the overlapping slabs. Actually, LUNA carved beautifully! Of course there are the “rocks” to deal with, but the interference was minimal. I can not deduct any stars (from a 5-star review, that is) because this is the nature of the clay. It is NOT a defect.
It is perhaps, the perfection of an ARTISTIC CLAY.

The mineral spots do not fully develop until the clay is fired to high temperature - Cone 5 to Cone 7 is what the label recommends.
Our kiln rose to a warm 6, just starting to bend the 7 cone.

Here's some more information about LUNA Stoneware Clay:

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS: