a study of crawl glaze pieces

Recently I mixed up a new barium glaze recipe that was noted as a lowfire cone 04 glaze.  Note, I used midrange porcelain for my testing bodies.
Interesting color response that I loved, but the feel was a very dry matte and the surface had a crawl effect (although it looks crazed it is not, the edges are smooth)  on the areas where thicker, the glaze turned a very vibrant purple and crawled, on the thin areas it was a lovely turquoise.   The color was brilliant though and I wanted to pursue perfecting the glaze to a smoother surface, in hope of keep the same color response.

I started by simply firing another piece to cone 5,  the glaze did not run, did smooth out a bit, but it still crawled in larger patches and  the brilliance in color was subdue.  The mottled look inherent of the nature of a matte finish.  Still I wanted this color, but in a silky soft finish. 

 

I mixed up another 1/2 batch (#2) this time increasing the flux via added neph and barium and continued firing at cone 5-6, no more low fires.   More neph seemed to make a deeper inky blue while more barium a lighter denser denim blue. 

Smoother, but where's the purple?  One more batch (#3) that I poured 1 cup of mixed epsom salt water solution into as part of my liquid, hoping the MgO would brighten the color up.  Well it did, but now we're back to a crawl effect.  Apparently all the mgo in the epsom salt water was overkill.  I will continue on, not making that mistake with the epsom salts and report new findings later on.  During these tests, I notice that on the pieces with a wash of red iron oxide at the base, a light green was occurring, so I also tested a few pieces that show the color response when iron is added.  I also had a green results over iron bearing clay bodies.

 

If anyone knows what ingredient will increase the purple, please feel free to leave a comment and I will play around with the amounts.

Ingredients in the glaze are Barium-Neph_EPK-Flint-Lithium-Copper

 

Happy Testing!

 

pit fired pots without digging up the yard - making pottery in my new campfire pit

These pictures are from a previous attempt at firing a little bowl in my fire pit purchased at Menards for having backyard campfires.
By using some organic fuels, coloring agents next to the pot and then wrapping in newspaper and tin foil, and finally allowing it to burn in the fire for several hours, I can make our evening outdoor fires have a little of the anticipation a child feels at christmas.

Trying to be humble, but pretty darn excited!

Yesterday, after many months of anticipation, I was greeted with a package on my doorstep from DRG Network. Alas, my yarn bowl was back home, and accompanying it on its journey were 2 hard copies of the current issue of Creative Knitting Magazine. Wow, the cover shot is of a finished top to die for. Wish I had the time to really delve into knitting when I see some of these creations. If you're a knitter, this would be a fabulous magazine to subscribe to - and either the online version or the snail mail version are available. Perusing through, I find an overhead shot of one of my yarn bowls on page 11 "Knitting with a conscious" article - with a great writeup on eco friendly green yarns. The article continues and there on page 90 in all her glory a full shot of my bowl. The yarns they chose to feature in the bowl couldn't have been more perfect. I am normally a very humble person, but I can't help but be terribly excited about this - thank you Creative Knitting!
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There's hard Chunks in my Coyote Shino Glaze - Oh My

Just thought I would take a minute to post this for anyone out there who is perplexed about finding hard little chunks that won't dissolve back into their shino glaze, which has just happened during the past few months. I keep my glazes in the basement. A dungeon of sorts, since it is a very old house, which is not heated by ducts. It's winter and sometimes drops into the 50's temperature wise, which I found out, is why my Coyote shino glazes were getting gritty/chunky. I didn't realize that just being cold would cause this, but it does. One of the ingredients in it doesn't tolerate cold temps well (neither do I for that matter).

So I posted my problem to my friends on the Etsy Mud Team after I had already glazed a bunch of mugs with it, chunks and all, thinking they would just melt down during the glaze firing. On the good advice of some of the members, I found out you need to immerse your glaze container in a bucket of nice hot water to warm up the glaze until you can get the chunks to dissolve. I tried it and it worked perfectly!

But in the meantime the already glazed pieces went on to be fired. The result was a somewhat mottled spotty effect, which worked fine over the black glaze that I had layered the shino on top of. Above is a picture of one of those glazed pieces heating up in the kiln at the early stages of a glaze fire.........every little hardened speck erupted in the glaze. It almost looks like gorilla glue oozing out all over the mug doesn't it? I found it so interesting I couldn't resist sharing.

My Review of Free Freight Pottery Supply

I just have to give a shout out to Alex and the others at Free Freight Pottery Supply for their really awesomely helpful and friendly customer service. I originally purchased some Coyote glazes from them last year for the purpose of making some food safe utilitarian wares. Occassionally it is fun to divert from art pottery and turn to things that are useful too. Making my own glazes, I was unable to achieve some of the colors or finishes I desired, and still have them be food safe. Thus the veer towards commercial glazes for mugs and such. Then I discovered they are also just what I needed for some of my new decorative pieces too. I have ordered 3 or 4 times now.

On Thursday night, I placed an order for glaze that I was low on and a few new ones to try....I have ideas you know, lots and lots of ideas.......
anyway, late Friday afternoon as I was working on some urchins and thinking about some new color combinations I want to try on them when I get my order from Free Freight Pottery Supply, when I noticed a crab claw that I had forgotten about, which I was saving for "inspiration" - (I think they are intriguing and lovely). It dawned on me I would need some orange if I wanted to try to mock the colors in a crab claw and so I quick gave a call to FFPS. I asked if they already had my order packed and ready to go/or shipped, and found out that yes, it had just finished being packed up. I told Alex I wanted to add a glaze to it, but that's okay, I could get it next time I ordered. But instead he said 4 magic words.... "we aim to please" and then went ahead and added the glaze to my package.

I can't say how much I appreciated it, here it was after 4pm on a Friday afternoon, and I am sure the last thing they wanted to do was open up a box they had just finished packing, to make a last minute addition to it. But, they did and that is the true meaning of great customer service! I think any other company would have just told me that they were sorry the order was already "processed". Oh, and did I mention how quickly my orders always arrive! I have waited upwards of 2 weeks when ordering from other companies, but have always had my orders from FFPS arrive within 3-5 business days.

I give them a big thumbs up and know I will be ordering many more times from them!
Click on the topic title link to visit their website.

English Channel Sea Urchins are my latest love

Every once in awhile I find a new texture or color combination that strikes me and I want to keep exploring the possibilities that it could become. Lately it has been the English Channel Sea Urchin that has inspired me, and along with some smaller ones I have finished a 5" one (real life size) and a cool Urchin inspired bowl. I love the way the spine nubs feel....so textural! Next, I want to explore these forms in some other colors, I am leaning towards greens to start with. These pieces have been made with white stoneware clay and slip. Once I move beyone prototypes, I may give them a shot in porcelain too. Be sure to check out my urchin treasury on Etsy by clicking on this posts title.

Works in Progress

I am slacker when it comes to keeping my blog updated, but time gets away from me easily and I will be going back to work in just one more week (may the 2010-2011 school year fly by and summer vacation return quickly!).

I have been rather excited about some new things I have been working on and my favorite, albeit time consuming, projects have been making English Channel Sea Urchins. With my airpen in hand, I can add all the little spine bumps without causing carpal tunnel aggravation. Experimenting with the glaze combos to color them with is fun too. I made a pretty nifty sea urchin bowl this week, along with a sodium silicate cracked pod that is very primitive and earthy.....just the way I like it! Of course you are seeing the pieces in their greenware state....