Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

The Rest of the First 2012 Glaze Fire

The previous post was about mugs with logos.  There were a few other items in the first glaze fire of 2012:

Not pictured: a small teardrop shaped vase, a Charger mug that turned out terribly, and a large mug with some stamped patterns.

I got a little tired of making mugs at one point so I wanted to try a different drinking vessel. I decided to make some tall handle-less forms. I’ll call them tumblers unless someone else has a better name for these tall cups. I feel like tumblers should have straighter sides.  I haven’t actually tried drinking out of them yet but I like how they turned out. My wife wasn’t as impressed and thinks they look like they should be used by kings and queens of the medieval times. Maybe if I dig a moat around the house?

I also wanted to make some yarn bowls to put on my shelf in the Stone Soup Emporium. I made three but I broke one before I could get it bisque fired and one has been donated to the Jefferson Elementary silent auction tomorrow. I’ll probably make a few more. I like how the glaze turned out on the inside of these two.

One of the best parts of the glaze fire was doing a little experimenting and enjoying the results. A while ago I wrote of mugs with poor attachments. A few were salvaged and survived the bisque fire so I decided to experiment with some glaze application. I dipped the two mugs in Saturated Iron to cover the outside. Then I brushed a patch of Eggshell on both sides of one and Alabaster Satin on both sides of the other. On top of these white squares I brushed a quick design with a black wash. The wash and glazes melted together a little bit and I think it adds some interest to each mug.

This weekend (hooray for presidents!) I hope to start cranking out another batch of logo mugs. I’ve been absent from the clay studio for the past week or so except to reclaim some clay and haul a couple boxes of new clay down to the bench. Here’s to getting dirty!

Mixing Ceramics Glaze – Pam’s Blue

About a week ago I mixed up some glaze from a pre-mixed powder.  The powder was Pam’s Blue by Coyote and it was my first attempt at mixing any kind of glaze outside of the Huntington Clay House.  I got to purchase some new tools and I did some research and even talked to a few people on Clayart.  In the end it wasn’t too hard.

respirator

nice respirator

I talked my wife into helping and she had a lot of fun….  She took a couple pictures so I could share my experience.  The first thing you want to remember is: Safety First!  I got to wear a new respirator so I didn’t breathe too much of the dust when I was dumping the powder into the water. It’s a good look!

mixing glaze

mixing glaze

My wife mixed the water while I slowly dumped the powder .  It got pretty thick, even when I used all the water that the directions called for.  I was supposed to use 1 gallon and 1 pint but added a lot more by the end of the process.  I used my cordless drill and a 1 gallon paint mixer to mix the powder into the water. Even after mixing it with the drill mixer for a while it was still pretty lumpy.

glaze sieve

glaze sieve

I put it through an 80 mesh sieve three times.  After letting it sit overnight I mixed it up again with the drill mixer and it was ready to be applied to some bisque ware. I even checked the specific gravity or “density” with a hydrometer.

I’ll have  a full post on the items that I pulled out of the kiln.  The Pam’s Blue that I mixed from powder actually looks different than the pre-mixed pints I’ve used.  Check later to see how!