Last Glaze Fires of 2013

The penultimate and final glaze loads before the end of the year have been fired revealing mixed results. About half of the stuff in this last two loads were projects from Clay Camp which all came out pretty well. The stuff that I managed to squeeze in mostly consisted of mugs,cups and tumblers. I had two different Amaco clay bodies present: My old favorite, Warm Brown Stoneware and the smooth and bright Buff Firing Stoneware.

The Good

I think these are two of my favorites from the last two loads. The cup on the left is my most Lehman-esqe piece yet and the glaze did some amazing things. The cup on the right also has some awesome crystal-y things happening with the glaze. So I slapped the macro attachment on my lens and got some detail shots.

Here is just a small part which I love, just below the rim. Crystals and… smoke?

This is the cup on the right in the photo above. I think the blue is a little over saturated in this photo but I love all the tiny crystals that formed.

I love how the world maps have turned out. The cup is pretty much perfect. If I got to do the vase again (which, I probably will!) I would have made it a little smaller. Closer to the size of the first world map vase. There is just a little bit too much empty space between the two sides of the map.

I’m getting this shape down. I’m not sure exactly what to call them. Kind of in between a tumbler and goblet. The closest thing I’ve found is a pilsner glass. These three are okay except for some slight crazing.

So This Is Christmas

The three photos above are all commissions or were created to give as Christmas gifts.

I’m pleased with the way these turned out. Pretty good shape on the left but I like the glaze better on the right. The lids are what I’m most happy with though. Still some practice to be done but I’ve made some progress.

These three little cups were hand built in the pottery class mentioned above. The one on the left was pinched and stamped, the other two were made with slabs and different texture rollers. The two outside cups were fired upside down with Jen’s Juicy Fruit over Waterfall brown on the outside. The cup on the left was made with Buff Firing Stoneware and the one on the right was Warm Brown Stoneware. The color difference is obvious and if you look closely you can see another problem… Crazing! This is where it goes down hill.

The Bad

Most of the bad came in the form of crazing. It actually looks pretty cool but from what I’ve read, if you’re making functional pottery you probably want to stay away from it.

There is some very slight crazing on the right cup above.

The two cups below are full of tiny cracks where the Jen’s Juicy Fruit glaze was applied at the top.

This is a detail shot of the greenish cup on the right.

All the crazing has come from the Jen’s Juicy Fruit glaze. As far as I can tell, it is much worse on the Buff Stoneware compared to the Warm Brown Stoneware. And it is worse when the Jen’s Juicy Fruit is by itself or only combined with Waterfall Brown. For example, the two cups at the very top of this post both have Jen’s Juicy Fruit at the top but were covered completely with the blue or brown glaze underneath first. There is still some very slight crazing on the cup on the left but I haven’t found any on the cup on the right (yet?).

The Ugly

Not a whole lot of ugly, just a lot of different than I was expecting. When I was glazing, my Licorice and Waterfall Brown glazes had settled to the bottom of the bucket for some reason. Maybe they just finally got too old. So when I was re-sieving the Licorice after scraping the chunks off the bottom, I think I added a little too much extra water. So my black was too thin on some of the pieces.

There were also some issues with thin spots with some of the other glazes. It mostly happened on the logo mugs so I think that after I wiped the glaze off the logos, I didn’t let them dry thoroughly before I glazed the rest of the mug.

I was also less than impressed with how some of the glazes looked on the Buff Stoneware, especially when there were thin spots.

The cup below has some nice glaze movement but the color is quite dreary compared to the same glaze combination on the Warm Brown Stoneware. And it crazed like crazy.

So, not all bad. But definitely a lot of learning opportunities. At least now I have something to work on in 2014!

Have a fantastic new year!