Author: del.harrow
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Manganese
By Rachel Eng The elevator doors chime as they open onto the lowest level. It is dark, and I blink several times, attempting to adjust to the near total lack of light. My son races ahead. I step out more carefully, not wanting to drop the cup I brought from aboveground. In the light, the…
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Chrome
By Rose Schreiber Can we imagine the Earth over two billion years ago, some 2060 million years in the past? Nearly half the Earth’s lifetime. What was it like? The pink-hued oceans, the fragmentary landmasses. No plants or animals yet, but there is oxygen in the air, released over hundreds of millions of years by…
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Cornwall Stoneware
By Rose Schreiber I am looking at a map of the peninsula’s granite outcroppings, trying to imagine something strange: the alien world of the granite’s formation, nearly three hundred million years ago. Whether or not I can visualize something so abstract—so nonvisual—is an open question. And can I visualize time in this way, hundreds of…
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EPK (Edgar Plastic Kaolin)
EPK stands for “Edgar Plastic Kaolin” and is named after the company that has historically mined it from north-central Florida, the Edgar Plastic Kaolin Company, known today as Edgar Minerals Inc. EPK is widely considered to be the best North American kaolin for use in suspending glazes because of its exceptional cleanliness, and it produces…
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Grolleg Kaolin
Grolleg, also known as English china clay, is a kaolin that is mined in Cornwall. Kaolins are also called china clays because the word kaolin stems from the name of a Chinese mountain where the high-quality clay was first mined. The word grolleg, however, is of uncertain etymology. Situated in the southwest peninsula of the…
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Kaolin
Kaolin is a soft white clay, and the main ingredient in porcelain clay bodies, but is also used industrially in the manufacturing of rubber, paper, and paint. It was first discovered in china and the name Kaolin comes from the Chinese word Gaoling – meaning “high ridge” – and also the name of a village…
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Mahavir Feldspar
Mahavir is a potassium feldspar imported by Laguna Clay and marketed as a substitute for the no longer available G200 feldspar which was mined in Monticello, GA. Mahavir Feldspar is mined in Beawar, Rajasthan, India by the Mahavir Minerals company: Mahavir’s mines are spread across 500 hectares of land, and contain high quality quartz, feldspar, clay,…
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Boron
Image source: Library of Congress By Rose Schreiber They used to get this stuff from one of the hottest places on Earth—Death Valley. They used to drag it out, something like 35 tons, wagon wheels 7 feet across, tires of iron to withstand the grit, the gravel for the 160 miles to the nearest railroad.…
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Iron
By Rose Schreiber Across the world, on every continent, there are ancient rocks striped red and ashy grey, marked by alternating bands of iron oxide and silica. Iron, silicon, oxygen: by far, the three most abundant elements that make up this planet. Taken together, these elements account for 80% of Earth’s chemical composition. The striped…
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Lithium
By Rose Schreiber Where the flamingos are, in briny lakes, high up on the Andean plateau—that is where you find it, huge reserves of it. Not so much white gold, as white petroleum: an element that sits in the contested crosshairs of a battery-powered future. Lithium. An area known as the ‘Lithium Triangle’ stretches across…