Now that I have the half ton of clay I ordered I decided to start with this model scaled to compensate for two shrinkings of clay. It’s inspired by a circa 1900 carved keystone I removed from a buidling facade around 1976. I have the other one I removed and so I was able to get the exact size of the stone and depth of the face etc from it to work with. I always called this one a cowboy due to the hat which years ago I thought suggested a cowboy hat, but it actually doesn’t seem to be, but is some kind of soft men’s hat with an…

The kiln reached final temperature just 11 minutes sooner than I estimated, I’ll open it up in the morning and see what I have. Meanwhile, after finishing another plaster piece mold of a design I used to cast about 30 years ago, I pressed clay into it now and we’ll see how it turns out. It took 10-1/2# of clay, the wall thickness of the clay is about 5/8″, and it is 10″ high, 4-1/4″ wide: Now about 3 hours later I was able to remove the lion, here he is shown next to one of the cut down wall plaque versions: The five pieces in the kiln all turned…

The program I came up with was 7 stages and started off with a 6 hour preheat @ 200 degrees F with a temperature rise of 60 degrees per hour, so it took about 2 hours to get to 200 degrees. I had also placed the four lion blocks but not the cherub in the kitchen oven overnight @ 150-160 degrees. Then it continued with segments 2 through 7: S2- 80 deg/hour to 280 deg S3- 100 deg/hour to 550 deg S4- 80 deg/hour to 750 deg S5- 150 deg/hour to 1100 deg S6- 180 deg/hour to 1700 deg S7- 80 deg/hour to 2060 deg with a 10 minute hold…

I was able to get the formula/factor to calculate the double clay shrinkage, so that issue is solved now. I also have 1,000# of clay coming tomorrow so I can start work on the next model. Meanwhile, I decided to make another design of mine into the clay-press format, it’s my old lion Nr.1265 which appears in my 1980 brochure as a wall plaque; I decided to revert him back to the original design which was a block shape, this required hand-recreating the original form, casting a rubber positive in my current mold and then making a new plaster piece mold of it. Here’s the rubber positive and the mold;…

I’m going to have to figure out what the clay shrinkage actually is and allow for TWO shrinkings to wind up with the size I want to do pressed clay versions of my work. I found the little cherub plaque really loses a lot of it’s visual impact due to the shrinkage. The original was 10″ wide and the fired terracotta is only 8-7/8″, that’s quite a reduction. So the way it has to work now is making a clay model large enough to compensate for it’s own shrinkage plus the shrinkage of pressed clay copies of it, I’m not great at math enough to easily calculate what this will…

Ive seen this years ago on West 12th street, the old St Vincent’s student nurses residence building, built in 1924 it features two entrances with these roundels depicting a nurse’ portrait. As it turns out, they are almost exactly the same size as my wolf roundel and my tigress roundel- about 20″. I really like this design, I may very well add it to my list of possible models to do. By the time this building was built in 1924 the facades were starting to get plain and devoid of ornaments, this building’s only real attraction is the entrance, the upper floors are just plain bland brick, nothing exciting at…

I happened to find this for sale and bought it because he is exactly the same as a couple I had removed from a pair of buildings at 522-524 E 12th street in NYC way back around 1977. Even the mold number 1097-L is identical. These were usually installed with two other sculptures: a small lion keystone, and a larger keystone depicting Athena with a battle helm, 522 and 524 however lacked the little lion heads and instead used a smaller version of Athena on the top floor where the lions would normally appear. These were selected out of a catalogue of sorts as these three sculptures can be found…

From a recent photo of the demolition of a 1917 church on Avenue A and 11th street in NYC, clearly no one has bothered to save even these;

I removed the four lion blocks from the kiln, all four turned out perfectly on the new kiln schedule, but the cherub plaque still had his face blown off. Here’s a photo of two lions on my bookshelf as bookends.

The kiln shut off just about the time I figured on after 24 hours and 20 minutes. I watched it just hit 2061 degrees and then it went to the 10 minute hold. I was able to calculate the temp rise in the last stage of 80deg/hour to be 1.333 degs per minute and the Bartlett controller kept it just about dead on, and shut off almost to the minute I had calculated while I was  waiting for it to shut off. I saved the firing profile as user 6 to use again as-is if the load turns out fine. I set the timer clock on the vent fan to…