Bets Are In

In last Saturday's post I asked if anyone thought that the slight reducing atmosphere inside a badly vented electric kiln might reduce the iron in laser jet decals. (Toner decals seem prone to turn brown-red in electric kilns.)
Dan Finnegan had the correct answer... it wouldn't make much difference...

The accidental extra long bisque firing did create a small number of craters in a few of the glazed surfaces. The surface had a few pinholes in the glaze already, but I planned for those, (I like these pinholes, they are buttery and soft. They add to the finished surface.) The craters though are sharp edged. (Not good) I've recently started sanding the craters and filling them in with a pre-made low fire glaze that is then refired. (Very good) So far I like the results, but this is still a new angle...

Any Bets?

Well, apparently I just can't help myself.

I liked how this yunomi came out of the kiln a few weeks ago, but what came out of the kiln was supposed to be just another step in the original design.

The slipped design is a backdrop for a handful of decals of floating eyes... (I don't know why... it just looks good in my mind's eye and I want to see how it plays out in reality.

This is how most of my work comes about nowadays.

Simple curiosity...)

The experiment this kiln load is "how will firing a few decals works with a full bisque load turn out?"
In oxidation my decals turn red... seems reasonable due to the iron content. With that thought in mind, I'm hoping the burning all of the organics out of my bisque ware will create a reducing atmosphere and blacken the decals up a bit...
Any bets?

Decal Ketchup

Time to get caught-up with what’s been happening around the studio now that the flurry and excitement of this weekends show is past….pant pant pant. So many kiln loads went through over the past 2 weeks, I’m still overwhelmed by the pile of photos to sort through and work to be cataloged.

I was surprised by the results of the load of work with decals. I’ve gotten so used to seeing a kiln load of experiments head off in a direction other than what I had in mind, but this time things generally worked out how I had envisioned. My transparent green and transparent blue glazes milked up a lot with crystals, (bummer), but I didn’t put a whole lot of work in with those glazes so no big loss, (yea!).

It was really fun to revisit some of the older pieces and attack them with the decals. The results made for some particularly nice left field work.

I was trilled that the Witch/Bitch pieces were really well received. I thought they were a hoot!

The canisters were fun. Even the sides of smaller canisters provides a lot of real estate to play with. Now that a bit of time is opening up, I'm curios to explore a few the possibilities that are springing to mind.