Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

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5 Reasons to Keep Making Pottery

Not that I need any more reasons to make more pots! Anyway, here are 5 reasons that I continue to press on. I’ve made a lot of bad pots but I feel like these recent pots give me some new direction and inspiration for my future work.

Dripping (C)up

Dripping (C)up

Dripping (C)up

Do you see what I did there? The ‘C’ is optional so it can be read “dripping cup” or “dripping up.” Get it?

Technical Info: Fired to ^6 in oxidation, Warm Brown Stoneware. Glazes: Licorice inside, Jen’s Juicy Fruit and Waterfall Brown outside.

Inspired by: Justin Rothshank’s seconds shelf dripping mug and a discussion with Dick Lehman about firing lids on teapots.

Why I like it: Fairly unique?, interesting color patterns, the glaze becomes part of the structure. I like how a little bit of bare clay shows through near the rim even though that was probably an accident.

Where to go next: I’ll continue to fire things upside down. And explore “glaze as structure” instead of just a surface decoration. I think that I could get some longer glaze drips if I get the right firing program set up. I’ll also look into different shapes and textures to see how that affects the glaze drips. I just made a pinch pot with some grooves and stamps just for this purpose. This is actually my third or fourth attempt at this. I have one that is in The Cup: An Interpreted Object. It was my first attempt at firing something upside down and I had some blistering glaze issues which actually look pretty cool. I only finished one before the entries were due or I would have entered this one, above. [Read more…]

Glaze Tests – Early Summer 2012

Finally…

I finally have some glaze test results from early summer. I decided if I was going to share them I may as well go all out and make them useful for anyone else that might be testing ^6 glazes in oxidation. If you click one of the six images below you should see the full-size, more readable images.

All base glazes are from the fabulous book: Mastering Cone 6 Glazes (affiliate link).

High Calcium Semimatte Base 2

I’m interested in developing some semi-matte glazes to add a little surface variety to my work. Here are two groups of test tiles with the High Calcium Semimatte 2 from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes (pg. 89).

High Calcium Semimatte 2 Red Iron Oxide and Rutile

High Calcium Semimatte 2 Red Iron Oxide and Rutile

High Calcium Semimatte 2 Rutile and Red Iron Oxide

High Calcium Semimatte 2 Rutile and Red Iron Oxide

I was really impressed with these two groups of glazes. I plan to use at least a few of these in the future after some more testing. I have already tested this base glaze with some more colorant combinations. It should be noted that the first tile in the bottom image is the “Bone” glaze from the book and the third tile is “Raw Sienna” both mentioned on page 90.

[Read more…]

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