Shigaraki (Iga) Clay

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OCTO
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Location: Penang, Malaysia

Sun Oct 21, 2018 9:11 pm

I have noticed a pretty similar characteristic between ChaoZhou clay and Shigaraki clay. Especially when it comes to brewing medium roasted DanCong.

Anyone had similar experiences??

I’m also pretty amazed by the ability of the clay to retain heat despite the clay’s lightweight and porous nature.

Very interesting..... Cheers!!
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Victoria
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Sun May 12, 2019 4:43 pm

@OCTO the two shigaraki pieces I have retain heat very well. One is a shiboridashi, the other a kyusu by Tachi Masaki. They are not thin though, so I think that helps with heat retention, also very tinny air pockets might help retain heat. Although, if air pockets are there, I’d think the pieces would explode in the kiln, at least that’s how I lost several pieces of clay sculpture while firing. It is possible though that hundreds of very tinny air pockets in the clay might not explode the piece when firing since they would be evenly distributed. The clay reminds me of tufa, a volcanic rock found in Italy, that also acts as a good thermal insulator in buildings. I have not tried either with DanCong yet so will experiment with my stash to see how it goes.
swordofmytriumph
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Tue May 14, 2019 7:04 am

What have you used your shigaraki for then, @Victoria? Have you tried it with sencha? If so, how did that go?
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Victoria
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Tue May 14, 2019 11:31 am

Yes, I’ve used both for sencha and the Shiboridashi also with gyokuro. Really nice wabi-sabi and sencha steeps very well in both, especially if sencha has some rough edges that could use smoothing out. The textural surface is so tactile and nice to handle. I could see having several Shigaraki pieces :) .
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