Featured Any info on this? What is the material? MCM?

I asked a while back and no one knew. Hoping some new eyes ca help. The material looks like reconstituted brick? This is heavy for its size. Like dense. The hollowed eyes are strange. It has a nice glaze. I thought I found something similar from Denmark or that region but I could never find d it again.
Help!

happy new year and TYIA

 

Terracotta, so 'baked earth/clay'. Glazed ceramic owls.

 

Aha! That never occurred to me. Lol ty

 

Terracotta is basically earthenware with iron in it, giving it the reddish hue. I always think of earthenware/ terracotta as low fire, cone 06, c. 1800 degrees, but it actually has more range: cone 06 to 04. It remains porous after it is fired. (Think of terracotta flower pots, but also used for hand-built sculpture, etc.)
That's c. 1800 F (c. 1000 C). This is an international forum.

 

It was odd to me because of the white specks in it

 

To make items more resilient to warping or cracking previously fired clay is added to the unfired clay. The clay is called grogged clay.

 

Another new nugget of information for me, thank you! Gotta love Antiquers!

 

nice mid century owls

 

From the thickness of the clay, your owls probably are handbuilt by an individual craftworker, not a factory. A molded figurine in mass-production would be slip-cast. (Too much waste of material to use clay in a press-mold, as with late medieval clay sculpture.) Are the owls and base separate pieces? From what I can see, it looks like the owls were modelled separately as two pieces and then placed on the third piece (the base) while still wet (greenware), scored with slip or extra water for adhesion. Holes would be arved out between the hollow figures and the base to release gases--otherwise the piece would blow up. Then comes the bisque or biscuit firing. After that, glaze would be applied and the piece refired.

I said low-fire terracotta before, but there are higher-fired stoneware clays with iron in them that have the same reddish hue. The matte, variegated glaze reminds me of higher-fired glazes in a gas or even wood-fired reduction kiln. The glaze was probably mixed from minerals by the artisan. Stoneware temperatures usually are cone 4-7: 2100–2280°F (1150–1250°C). Or, depending on the clay & kiln, even higher (although I usually think of that as porcelain range). Stoneware is usually vitreous, so you can see if water soaks in (earthenware terracotta low-fire) or is repelled (fired at stoneware or porcelain temperatures). (You can fire stoneware clay at earthenware temperatures--just a bisque firing--when making sculpture, but not for mugs, plates, etc. that must be vitrified.) But I suspect the glaze on your owls was fired at stoneware temperatures--necessitating stoneware clay. Let us know if the clay soaks or repels water (to see if I am correct or not.)
You mention hollowed-out eyes. Is there any glue residue that would indicate that separate eyes (maybe glass) had been glued in them?

 

I love it when you talk dirty.

 

I think it’s all one piece but I’ll have to take another look. The eyes have no glue I don’t believe anything was ever in them. Ty!

 

Lol

 

It really looks like one piece to me