Wire. High temperature wire, in fact. It will go to at least 2232 degrees Fahrenheit in the kiln and keep its strength.
I learned about high temp wire from Sandy Simon at the 2013 Women Working With Clay symposium in Roanoke, Virginia. Over several days, I watched Sandy throw vessels with apparent spontaneity yet with evident care as well. One of the things she did was insert Nichrome wire into the lids and sides of vessels to act as knobs and handles. (http://traxgallery.com/category/artist/sandy-simon/) Last time I was at Ceramic Supply, I picked up a package of high temperature wire, thinking of Sandy Simon's work, but not sure where I might use the wire.
Sometimes, at need, something I've learned comes back as a possible solution for a problem I am having in the designing of an object. My chanukiot are a case in point. I had recently been making 8 indentations in the top of each chanukia, each indentation to accommodate either the bottom of a candle or the bottom nub of a glass cup bearing oil and a wick. But the stress to the clay where I pressed the indentations caused cracking in the drying phase of the chanukia.
When I went to load my recently made chanukiot, now dry, into the bisque kiln, I found large cracks in two places. One place was at the point in the body where I'd pushed together the walls of a thrown porcelain cylinder to create the flattened chanukia form.
(You can see the score marks inside the crack, where I pushed the walls together right on the fresh pot on the wheel.)
The other cracking place was on another chanukia, where I'd pressed in the aforementioned indentations on the top plateau.
(This one cracked where the top of the pot came together, and where I made indentations for the candles.)
I went icy calm; I'd put several hours of work into each piece by now, had dried them slowly, and these had now messed with me. I decided at that moment to make two radical changes. First, I would change the clay I use for strongly altered forms like chanukiot, from porcelain to stoneware. (The heck with YOU, porcelain.) Porcelain is too finicky and resists staying altered (it likes to revert to its first thrown state), and it is stupid to keep using it in place of something that is more compliant with a complex form.
So I banished the porcelain and got out some groggy, buff colored stoneware, the kind my students use, that is so much more forgiving than the !?*&!#^ porcelain. I got on the wheel and made three chanukiot, in a burst of adrenaline. I improved the form a bit, too, while I was at it; I threw the new chanukiot on the wheel upside down. The foot was made at the top of the piece this time, with the intent to turn it over to alter it. That way I would have a nice, trim, finished foot. (It's hard to trim a good foot on a piece that's no longer round!) I turned the form over right side up to work on after. I saw right away that the move to stoneware was a good change*.
Second, instead of putting any dents into the top of the first new chanukia, risking stress cracking again, I got out the high temp wire and created one long row of triple loops, evenly spaced from one another.
(Unscientific yet functional measurements for the oil cup/candle placements and low-tech apparatus for hand-forming the wire. I made the loops by hand but started the first one on a nail to anchor it.)
In essence, these look like 8 mini springs with a short length of straightish wire between them. They're made of one uncut length. I left extra wire on each end to bend down and stick into the top plateau of the soft clay of the chanukia. I did this for all three chanukiot. I hope this works out to be a good design, because I really like it. My main concern is that glass oil cups (there's a set of them in the box in the photo above) might be heavy for the wire once the chanukia is done. I used 17 gauge wire. 24 gauge is also available, although that much harder to wind into loops.
(Chanukia, wired. You can see the finished-looking foot, which I threw at the top of the vessel first, then turned the completed vessel over to flatten the walls together. This underglazed chanukia has not yet been inscribed with sgraffito, so it is like a blank canvas.)
Will the clay crack as it dries and shrinks where I stuck in the ends of wire? I hope not. (The wire will be unyielding as the stoneware shrinks around it. I made the insertion holes roomy, but are they roomy enough?) If that happens, this is one more year when I won't have any of these ready for Chanukah. And I did start more than two months ago. My take-away here..? Next time I start SIX months early.
To bolster hope's springing, I'm making my most logical, educated guesses. The days of leaning on dumb luck are long over. However, the days of this simple material having the last laugh on me are probably not.
My sister in law asked me, "Can't you make a more simple design?" It's not a bad question. The answer is probably "No." I have to design 1) for my aesthetic 2) to give the buyer something special, and 3) taking into account the nature of the clay, underglaze, glaze, and kiln, no small set of variables. Last, 4) I have to design something the buyer will understand and appreciate. Constant accommodation has to be made for all. I have to be flexible, flexible...flexible. I simplify it all to the full extent that I can, and still be able to call the piece individual and handmade.
Anyway, Sandy Simon, thanks for the inspiration. Here's hoping.
(* I do intend eventually to make a video of this whole chanukia process, once all the steps turn out to be the right ones on a regular basis. It's interesting enough to share.)