observations on working with the new art clay copper clay

I spent yesterday up in Nashua with Carol Babineau playing with the new copper clay from Aida - Art Clay World.

We each started out with a 50 g package of the copper clay. I ended up with everything on the composite picture, plus 2 more lentil halves. The clay itself seemed to hold its mosture content well and has a nice feel.

We fired for about a half hour at just about 1730F, which was as high as Carol's kiln would go, and then after a quick cold water bath out of the kiln, pickled briefly in Sparex. For pieces with heavy firescale that didn't come off with pickling, we used a dremel with the reddish-brown 3m radial bristle disks.

most came out of the kiln with fairly heavy firescale (see the bird),

but some popped right off in the cold water bath (like the half lentil)

leaving a fair reddish color on the high spots. Pieces with moderate firescale seemed to clean up fairly well in pickle. On the other hand, some pieces (like the bird), didn't lose much of their firescale , even after pickling. it even shows at 2 colors- more reddish closest to the copper base, and a dark blue-green above that.

I tried chopping up some dried clay pieces and adding them to my owl,
trying to emulate the feathers above the beak. these came out rounder
and less defined - I wonder if the base owl piece acted like a heat sink
holding the heat on the chunks hotter and longer than it would with
regular Art Clay Silver.




I'd like to get my hands on some more of the clay and try some do some more experimenting - since I tend to use a lot of copper wire in my polymer-wire work, I can see this new clay will add a new dimension to my work , with highly textured copper focal beads