Oh – must thank Klaus Osterwald for the boxes that will make my last week at .ekwc easier. These have been featured in my glaze test altar as well.

Klaus – I think of you often each time I notice a sound of life. Thank you for heightening my awareness of the gift of sound in our lives!

Off to my last day of working wet clay, mixing flax into a new sample batch of bone china (this may work better than the paper to strengthen the wet clay, without stiffening it’s memory) doing a trial mix of glaze into the bone china clay in an attempt to glaze only one side of the panels – and setting up for kiln firings tomorrow. ( maybe two kilns – one with glaze one with sand as a slump for bone china objects that deflect in the firing process if left unsupported. Could be a long day here in .ekwc. Glad Tanya is cooking tonight.

Then I was off to Rotterdam. Arriving in the train station was a bit like a mini NYC subway experience after Delft. Still surrounded by the familiar Dutch mass transit vernacular – somehow people’s movement and everything said – Metropolitan”

I was happy to escape to NAI – Netherlands Architectural Institute. A fifteen-minute walk along a symbolic canal glazed by a thin sheet of ice. I spent five hours reading in the library there. Perched on the second floor looking out over future museum park, books piled up around me. Incredible resource. I explore the boundary between public private _ mind and body; construction of skins, philosophy of urban design, Droog, etc. One could stay for weeks. At the opening of Architecture of the Night, that night, someone asked if I’d accessed the archives? Not yet. I was given a pass for one year of free entry. What a host country!

Delft Factor lent some hints for our project. I studies the gentleman spraying glaze (he rotates the object and moves the spay gun left to right gently locating it close to his head for distance) the plates are mass produced using a press – see the air hose on the metal band that contains the plaster mold) The self guided tour also featured a rich history of terracotta tile works, a simple demonstration of the hand painting ( is the cobalt mixed with India ink to give it a more visible viscosity for the “water” color sort of look)

Delft is a city of bicycles. On my walk over to the Royal Delft Factor, I came across a sign for bikes. Wow, Rotterdam, my next destination was listed. How small is Holland?