In my next glaze firing, hopefully early next week, I was gonna do a couple tests of Joel’s (over at FetishGhost) ^6 crawly glaze. He warns on the blog about it’s inability to be handled and other tendencies. I mixed it up with Sofia and grabbed a test tile that already had some glaze on it and submerged it for a couple seconds and set it down behind me. I turned around after a minute or so and here’s what my test tile looked like…
Now here’s where years of glazing experience come into play. Just by looking at it and without any other information I figured out that this was not going to work, hard to believe I know. Decided maybe add some more water and maybe dunk it quickly and maybe even put it on a piece that’s already damp. Anyway, got a couple of tests where it doesn’t look like it will fall off and melt on my shelves so I’ll see what happens. On another note, my second bisque was cool enough to unload. I had several ornately decorated bowls in the bisque, several smaller ones and two larger ones. I didn’t even have to pick it up when I saw this large crack on one of the bigger ones…
Pretty sure this is NOT due to the firing and I believe that I may have bumped it when the rim was hanging a touch over the edge of the table. I don’t mind losing pots and we all do but I wish I would have ruined it earlier before I spent however many hours I spent decorating. C’est la vie! <– French, I can't help it, it just flows out of me. The bright side is that the chocolat <– ok, I'll stop, glaze from a couple posts ago was really meant for pieces that have no underglaze and I wasn't going to test it on one of the underglazed pieces because I thought that it would be a bit too dark and that the underglaze would get lost underneath the dark chocolat glaze. I wasn't sure what it would look like either way and now since the bowl is ruined, I can try it out and if it's too dark, then it's doubly ruined. Here's one that didn't get ruined…
The next pic is a closeup of some of the textural details. This is the sort of thing, with the different textures near or on top of one another, that gets me going and makes me really look forward to seeing the finished pot, of course, I had better have a more successful day than today. The cracked pot was only the beginning, read: damn reading glasses and infernal clumsiness! Tomorrow is bug day but might get a bit of glazing in because the bug had about 70 tiles in the kiln and we might glaze together.
July 11, 2009 at 9:11 am |
Ouch, sorry about the cracked pot… Appreciate your ability to look on the bright side, i.e. that you can now use it without flinching for your chocolat test. The other bowl looks great!
July 11, 2009 at 10:57 am |
James-those bowls are beautiful
July 11, 2009 at 11:36 am |
Sorry about the pot(s). But boy that other one looks awesome. That crazing glaze is crazy!
July 11, 2009 at 11:45 am |
That part about the years of experience made me laugh. Nice one.
July 11, 2009 at 12:23 pm |
Your surfaces are just incredible – very contemporary and yet very craft orientated – as stated before, I luv the abstract expressionits approach – especially within the context of studio ceramics. The crack is always there – this one we can do without. A frustrating reminder. The love and hate of ceramics. Luv the graphic – indicating the crack – how did you do that.
July 11, 2009 at 12:41 pm |
Buongiorno Jim, the long work of decoration we see, certain that is Merdaccia a little be a crack when it first was perfect . Courage and go on.
Ciao
Filippo
July 11, 2009 at 2:32 pm |
Mmmmm, thanks for the close-up pictures of the textures.
July 11, 2009 at 5:54 pm |
It IS SUNGLASSES’ fault, yeah….
July 11, 2009 at 6:13 pm |
Could have been Sunglasses tail that hit the pot. Looking forward to the chocolat and the crawl on your beautiful bowls.
July 12, 2009 at 7:59 am |
Hey Jim, I had two largish pots crack during my last glaze firing. Weird cracks. I’ll post about them soon. Good luck with the glaze firing.
July 17, 2009 at 7:33 am |
[...] was the crawly glaze and I know what the next step should be there. When I first tried it on that test tile I figured I’d better make it thin or it wouldn’t stay on the piece and I erred on the [...]