Luckily, working in clay is a study of mistakes, (that’s probably why it takes so many of us decades to get where we think we are going with our work), so I know I’m not alone.
This last firing is a great example of me not listening to that tiny voice of reason that plagues me in the studio. As the voice suggested, I had sieved all of the glazes I was getting ready to use for the firing, well I thought I had… I noticed my white liner had small flecks in it. The little voice said I should stop glazing and sieve one more time, just in case… my thought, of course, was “it’ll melt”…
Well I was WRONG!
Of course the entire kiln load came out better than I was aiming for until… you look at the interior. None of the flecks melted, leaving a rough surface on the interior of every single piece. Now I get to try my hand at getting a nice thick reglaze on the interior without that making an even bigger mess of it.
Any suggestions?
Here are a few before and after shots using the texture and crawl glaze showing differing thicknesses in application. It’s pretty thin on the cup, but you can see where the unfired glaze starts cracking up at the plane changes at the ribbing.
These will crawl a lot unless a compatible glaze is used under the crawling glaze. Over the past few firings, I’ve been learning to use my Blue Hares Fur glaze to act as a stabilizer at these severe crawling points.
With the large canister, the whole thing is a sever plane changes, so the whole canister has been given a coat of the Blue Hares Fur before the crawling glaze was poured over the top. Too thick and it’ll peel right off as it dries. I needed a heavy separation on this piece so I kept spritzing down the glaze as it was trying to pull away as it was drying.
The technique seemed to work and I was very happy with the results.
1 comment:
very timely post from my point of view. first that big piece is beautimous beautimous. i've been experimenting with the crawly glaze too. i mentioned before that i put it over all my glazes but too thin last time and this time i started to experience some of that flaking too and came to the spritzing conclusion myself believe it or not. one seems beyond hope but i pushed down the little flakes with my fingers and dipped it in water and the resaturation seemed to let everything lie back down, of course i haven't checked today to see if it made it all the way dry. definitely a persnickety proposition but you pieces came out beautifully
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