About Celadon
by K.I.L. Kenny
89 pages / 23600 words
ISBN: 978-1-61040-151-7
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Ohio is a far cry from the surfer beaches of Australia, and Bryan's got some readjusting to do after years away. When the potter Nilsson crosses his path, small town life starts looking pretty good. But while Bryan is at loose ends and ready for fun, Nilsson is fanatically dedicated to his studio, immersed in a difficult project to perfect a celadon glaze. Nilsson seems content to count the world, and Bryan, well lost for art. Bryan's ready to throw his cell phone out the window, or chain Nilsson to the bed, or maybe both. Will any of it be enough to convince Nilsson of the old adage about all work and no play?
Sample
When he knocked, the voice that beckoned him in was abrupt. No aproned lover
met him. Bryan shut the door behind himself and looked across the studio to
the long worktables.
Lined up on a scrubbed surface were half a dozen clay forms: dishes, a
teacup, even a covered bowl. The outlines of each were perfect, but color
splattered over them in blotches, mostly shades of amber, brown, and green.
None of the pieces had the look of control, of intention. Of art. They
looked stricken with blight.
Bryan thought it would be wise not to comment. He walked to the table and
picked up the teacup, running his fingers over the bumps of slagged glaze.
Nilsson hadn't yet looked at him. He was staring at the ruined ware. "Six
firings. Not a one has gone right. It's reaching the temperature, the
reduction is starting to happen, and then..."
"Reduction?" Bryan asked quietly.
"It's that heat I told you about, the temperature that makes the celadon.
You heat the kiln way, way up, and then starve the fire of the oxygen it
needs to burn. The hot air gets full of free carbon atoms, a lot more carbon
than in regular air, and it wants to hook up with oxygen to balance itself
out. So it takes the oxygen that's part of the chemicals in the glaze.
Losing the oxygen makes the glaze change color." Nilsson pointed to the
green blotch inside the teacup that Bryan held. The center of it was a
lovely, preternatural swirl of color, like sea foam whipped into cream.
All around the rim, the cup was a ragged-looking brown dotted with gray.
Nilsson said, "When the temperature isn't maintained, the oxygen stays in
the glaze, and the color stays brown. It's a very nice brown, if that's what
you're after and you fire it properly. But I don't want it."
The cup felt cool and smooth against Bryan's fingertips despite the flawed
glaze. The shape of it fit a man's hand without looking outsized or clunky.
It was easy to understand why something so solid, so natural in his grip,
would appeal to Nilsson's client.
"The brown means parts of the kiln aren't getting hot enough?"
"Probably. I've tested the same batch of glaze in the updraft kiln here, and
the color goes over without a hitch. Perfect every time. So it's not the
glaze that's bad. Miguel designed both kilns, and allowing for the materials
used and the..."
Bryan lost the thread of Nilsson's anxious technical rundown as he felt his
phone buzz gently in his jacket pocket. Text message. There was no reason to
think that now-- Still, he had a funny feeling about it.
Succumbing to temptation, he pulled out the little rectangle and pressed the
touchscreen.
"Oh, shit," he said.