Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Death is All in the Details

As students we used to say say "If I only come out of this firing with just one piece I really like, I'll be doing ok?"


Gotta say that meeting that expectation, sucks...

Lots of neat stuff, but it just takes just one detail to kill a gem.


 There are crows hidden in there...

The irony is that I like most of the work, it's just not sellable. So I guess it's time to play with the results and see what develops. (I love this part!)

Here's a new problem...

A chalk mark... weird.

A recurring problem that's just asking for trouble...

All of the lids of the "Nob'n'alls" were fired separately, all of the lids warped.

The one success...

10 comments:

carter gillies said...

Yikes! But they sure are beautiful to look at....

Any speculation on what went wrong? Do you think refiring will only make it worse? One of the details that I absolutely love in the cup that came out perfect is that the slip design lines are followed by the crawl pattern. This doesn't seem to happen as consistently on all the other work. Any idea what the difference was?

Good luck! I hope you get it figured out. And they really are marvelous to look at. Maybe the glaze issue isn't as catastrophic for the jars? Judicious sanding?

FetishGhost said...

Hey Carter,I think most of the problem is my specific gravity of the glaze. If it's just a touch off, it does lots of unpredictable things. That's part of the reason I love using this glaze, you just never know what you are going to see when you open the kiln. I'm almost reluctant to get it dialed in because then I wouldn't get to see things like these. Instead they'd be sellable.
I'm expecting that they will blister and get much worse in the refire, I got a few Doc Frank experiments to tryout though...

Tracey Broome said...

I don't understand, these are all absolutely beautiful! Are you being too critical? I think you could still sell them, maybe point out what you think is wrong and offer a discount. Get out the dremel tool :)
LOVE that cup and the jars are just spectacular!!!! BTW, I finally got a chance to sit and watch the interview on your last post, what a treat, isn't she great?!

FetishGhost said...

Trace, I'm at the point where I really like this stuff, it's just so far south of what people are willing to accept. I'm not sure I really want to be the odd kid on the playground again.

jim said...

hey joel, all i can say is wow. not sure what's wrong with the cup in the first pic and was wondering if all 3 of the jars have something similar to the pic of the drip. that being said the pieces look fantastic although i am familiar with the feeling that if something is a bit off, people wouldn't buy it... that's a long discussion though. that last cup is really a wonderful piece, and i'm amazed at how the crawl breaks on the outline of the slip design underneath. it doesn't seem like that outline happens all the time though, must be some very subtle application thing. either way though, the cup and other surfaces are really superb

ang design said...

ok....now really i love those daggy bits for me its the weird things that happen in the kiln that i love, some peeps consider them treasures.... so seriously save me one!!!! and no dremmeling off the dags!!!

cookingwithgas said...

and all I could think was WOW----WOW and WOW! Good grief they are beauties in their own right taking on a bit of a ghostly appearance that I love- troubles- we potters love us some troubles and problems- we are puzzle solvers in our own rights.

Ron said...

Hey, I'll say 'ditto' to everything the other commenters have said. I love those jars. Sucks that those lids warped on the knobandalls.

bfreeceramics said...

killer work

togeii said...

I like all of them.