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Luke Lindoe prospected Montana and Idaho for clays during the 1970s. He found an amazing variety of fireclays, earthenwares and stonewares. Every color, texture, plasticity. For each he made test bars to fire at different temperatures. Our M2 and Troy clays originated from this work. We just found these bars, but do not have Luke's shrinkage and porosity data, so are measuring them now. He code-numbered each and stamped them with four-inch marks. So we can derive the total fired shrinkages and measure the porosities. We can tell a lot about the plasticity of each by the nature of the cut lines. The texture also is obvious. Now we just need to start searching Luke's map archives to find out where all of these are.
The mural is made from unglazed stained stoneware tiles, each cut to shape. The inscription reads: "THE DOCTOR OF TODAY TAKES HIS PLACE AT THE HEAD OF A VERY LONG LINE OF DISTINGUISHED PREDECESSORS; THE KNOWLEDGE AND TRADITION THAY MAKES THE MEDICAL PROFESSION WHAT IT IS TODAY GROWS FROM
THE GREAT DOCTORS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY AND OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE, OF GREECE, OF EGYPT AND BEYOND - LOST IN THE PAST. THIS MOSAIC PAYS TRIBUTE TO THAT VAST HISTORY."
John Porter was a prolific glaze tester and developer, both in reduction and oxidation firing. We shot and cataloged hundreds of pictures of a treasure trove of glaze samples of his testing from the 1970s to the 1990s. Among them are also a few samples done by Luke Lindoe. Every one of the many hundreds of specimens was code-numbered to index into John's meticulous notes. Hopefully, more cataloguing of our archives will uncover more of his notes and provide clues and information to derive more of the recipes of these.
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