Glazing, Glazing, Glazing

Abbreviated Tuesday night studio session, so I spent it primarily glazing through the rest of my bisque. I've now glazed everything I have to glaze, save my set of plates. Which I'm still debating how to do. I'll figure it out.

Below is a picture of the test-piece I fired last week with a new glaze. As you can see, the coloring itself is quite nice, but the bubbling in the bottom is less than desirable. Apparently this will be a glaze that needs to be intentionally applied thinly.

The bubbling is the result of the glaze being too thick and so, while in the kiln upwards of 2400 degrees, it does in fact run to the bottom of the bowl and then bubble. Some of the bubbles then remain as the piece cools. I have since popped the bubbles. Sometimes you can file down the edges of the popped bubbles and still have a nice smooth piece, but since this one is quite small, it may just have to be tossed. It might also make a nice piece to leave in the studio to hold slips, glazes, etc. Hmm.

I spent the majority of my time in the studio glazing, which requires less setup than throwing, and generally less clean-up as well. But it still can be a little messy. Here's a picture of my glazing mess:


It also perhaps just seemed more messy than normal last night on account of using numerous glazes. Prior to this week, I have tended to glaze small batches of work at a time, generally as parts of a cohesive body of work, so I would work with one, maybe two glazes at a time. Not quite the case last night.

Here's everything glazed/in process of glazing.

And here's everything (almost - a couple larger bowls

had to move to a lower shelf) ready to fire. So, officially,

I have 2 1/2 shelves of pots waiting for the glaze firing.

Given that I'm glazing such an expansive amount of work at a time, I have been using more glazes at a time. I think yesterday was perhaps the most diverse amount of glazing I've ever done at once - I used five glazes in all, as opposed to my normal two. Five isn't really that many more, but compared to using two at a time the clean-up really seems much larger. 150% more clean-up. Or, 250% of my original total. Yeah, that's right. I used percentages. I can do it in fractions, too.

I decided to be brave and did a couple pieces in that new glaze - after watering it down a bit and doing my best to make it a thin application. We'll see if it works.

My non-glazing work last night was of the decorating variety, which is fun and requires little cleaning or setting up, provided I've already slipped and trimmed. Below are the bowls.

The ones on the left are the larger of the four - those boards they're sitting on are about 7" squares, so that gives some perspective on the size. The ones on the right are marginally smaller - they could nest nicely inside of their color-coordinated neighbors there.

That was it for the evening - abbreviated, but adequate. I've got a couple of commissioned projects to get cracking on, so I'll probably be back into the throwing later this week. I'm also thinking I'm pretty well-stocked on the sgraffito-work side of things, so I'll probably be getting away from that for a couple weeks. I'm starting to feel like I'm repeating myself with some of the designs, which shouldn't really be happening. So taking some time away from it to clear my mind of it will be good. Not quite sure what I'll do instead - perhaps some relief oriented carving, and certainly more glazing diversity. We'll see.

I'm excited to get all of this glazed work back, and excited to share it with all of you when I do.

As always, let me know if you have any questions, comments, or thoughts about my work.

Of if you want to buy something. Then you should really let me know.

Seriously.