Stick structures made from clay

Using the material budget available to us, resident artists, I wanted to try a few different clay bodies while in Bornholm. On the island, archeological findings recovered pottery fragments going back 6000 years. In the 1700s and 1800s, the place was one of the centers of pottery production and export in the north. The industry ebbed and flowed, and just around when it went into its final death spiral, in the 1970s, studio potters started populating the island, at some point reaching 100 practicing ceramists. The biannual European Ceramic Context conference is meant to be injecting fresh blood into this history.
The reason for pottery on the island is, of course, clay in the ground. No longer mined, there used to be a grayish-light brown stoneware readily available here. I've heard talk about a secret spot where some of this clay (bluish color when freshly dug up) can still be found. I asked our technician, Jacob, to find me clay in Denmark that is recognized in Bornholm as local, and I've receiver 400Kg of a coarse light brown clay (full of "chamott") And of course, some porcelain.
I got to work right away with the porcelain, which turns out to be very plastic and forgiving in this country. Its color will not be a pristine white as the bone china I used last year was but it feels really great in the hand.
Of course, simple, easily manageable things are of no interest to me. I'm using the porcelain to recreate a house of card structure of little extruded coils (kind of like slim porcelain sticks) that tether on the verge of collapsing. So far, saving some instances of my clumsy fingers knocking a few sticks off, I've managed to complete several test pieces, get them through drying without falling apart, and load them into the kiln. Right now, the first tests are being fired to 1260 degrees Celsius (about cone 9). This week, I've also finished 2 actual pieces, building them larger with the help of a cardboard box. This project could still have a lot of potential, but I'm also eager to move on to a very different project, one that actually has something to do with the exploration and experience of the surrounding landscape, architecture, and history. So, stay tuned for the details... Here is a picture of my two traveling companions.