Studio ups and downs

Snack dish

 I'm sort of fascinated by these little snack dishes that are minimally formed, maximally textured, and glazed with terror in my heart. This one turned out pretty well. These narrow dishes (6" wide at it's widest, about 14" long) are great for displaying alternating slices of pizza. Also good for cheese etc.

Box o' glory and pain

So the above was a success. But the big piece that I took hours and hours to make failed on the last firing. Such a bummer. I missed a class on surface design due to illness, so I did some internet research, and made samples and this large vessel. . .6" wide, 12" tall. The surface pieces are cut and then water-etched over leather hard pieces that have been covered with a colored underglaze. It is such a cool surface. 

Water etching sounds more complicated than it is. The entire surface is painted with an underglaze or 2 or three. Then a stencil (plastic, or stencils you make out of newspaper) is place firmly on the surface of the clay, and the whole mess is wiped over repeatedly with a wet sponge. Rinse, repeat. The result is a raised and colored area where the stencil prevented the wiping away of the color, and the surrounding areas that are washed clean of the color.

So cool. So I dried this piece very slowly and very well. All was good after bisque firing. But the final firing to full vitrification proved to be my/its downfall.

Scene of the crime

 

You can see where the seams cracked, making the lid not fit, and of course compromising the whole of the piece. It is now in the trash, but I needed to emphasize my foolishness (to myself and you, gentle readers), but also to let all gaze upon the glorious-ness of the surface design. The next piece will be smaller and made of stoneware, not porcelain. Yet another lesson in this lesson-filled life.

Test tiles with water etching

 Test tiles illustrate some interesting results using stencils and water etching. I especially like the 2 below. The right tile is just porcelain water etched deeply over a tree branch stencil. No glaze. The left tile gets the "most surprising" award. The raised areas are pieces of newsprint that I randomly cut out (unsurprising that I made leaves and branches), but that thin newsprint made a pretty impressive impression, didn't it!

Left, newsprint stencil, right commercial stencil

Finally, a couple of more pedestrian pieces. Two bowls glazed with Bark and rimmed with Emeraude, and a mug (still trying to make the perfect mug for me) that I used a True Celadon glaze on. Note that the Emeraude rim does run much over the celadon. Yet another lesson.

 

 

Two brown bowls

Another almost perfect mug