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While using old NYT pages for hand building I came across an article from last September:


"We know them best for their stone tools and intrepid mammoth hunting. But new discoveries in Croatia suggest that ice age humans made evocative ceramic art far more regularly than once believed."


"They are 15,000 to 17,500 years old — the first European evidence of ceramic art after the ice sheets stopped spreading."


"Tantalizingly, several of the Croatian pieces feature the imprint of a finger, perhaps left there when the artist tried to smooth wet clay."


Here's a link:
http://www.nytimes.c...istry.html?_r=0

My "Magic Cooker" -aka L&L e28T- has 4 buttons for programs. Slow Bisque-Fast Bisque-Slow Glaze-Fast Glaze.
Other than dryness of greenware, is there a preference of speed? Or are the programs different for other reasons?
I bisque at Fast Glaze, to ^04, then fast glaze to ^5/6.
I always assumed that the bisque firing was just to burn out the nasties, (and water!), and make the clay mature enough to handle.

How do you print words on clay? Rubber stamps? Bisque stamps? Laser cut stamps? There seems to be a dearth of commercial alphabets available.