Time to do a little glazing!  Or a lot, as it were.  Here’s a glimpse of what things look like when I spend an afternoon up at the studio.

I do my glazing and firing at this amazing place.  The facilities and available equipment and materials are pretty much everything I could possibly want at this stage in my career–I’m learning so much!

What’s available in the glaze room:

Glazes!

Test tiles with possible glaze combinations!

Raw materials!  (This makes possible my foray into mixing new and exciting glaze colors–I’ll get quasi-technical in a later post, but right now I’m mostly experimenting with celadons and ash glazes.)

A spray booth!  This is a big deal.  Beautiful gradient effects are possible using this application technique;  I spray most of my larger items and my mugs.  (To clarify: you could spray without a booth–you would just inhale a lot of corrosive and carcinogenic particles.  The booth has a powerful fan that pulls the airborne particles up and away from your face.)

Pictured below are pots that are in the “bisque” stage–they have been fired once, to a low temperature (around 1800 degrees–you know, no biggie), enough to harden them so they can take a little rough treatment, but not enough to make them impermeable to moisture like the finished product will be.  At this stage they are very porous and will absorb the water from glaze, helping the glaze to dry quickly into a relatively solid surface that can be handled.

Today I need to glaze a bunch of these soap dishes and card holders, and also a  pitcher and cup set.  The set I’ll spray; little guys like these just take a quick dip in a glaze bucket.

I neglected to photograph the actual process of this, but you always want to make sure there is no glaze on the feet, or foot, of your pot.  Glaze basically turns to glass in the kiln, flows a bit, and will stick to whatever it touches, in this case kiln shelves.  To avoid this, you want about a quarter-inch of blank clay on the bottom of your pot, to allow for a little bit of flow (this can be pushed once you know your glazes).  So the bottom of one of these trays will look like this after I’ve dipped it, used a damp sponge to wipe back the excess glaze, and fired it:

When I have more than, say, one pot to glaze, to keep from going crazy I create little stacks or groups of them and dash off little notes on scrap paper so that I don’t have to revisit the umpteen glaze decisions I made 10 minutes ago.  This week I have a lot of these little trays and business card stands to glaze (I may have been heard to use the term “a million” when stressed.)

This pitcher and these cups were my donation for the auction at the St. Charles Artwalk this past weekend.  Since I’ve gotten onto this ash glaze kick (more on that later), I decided the set would look stunning in a combination of ash glazes and a glossy blue celadon.  I also had it fired in the soda kiln, hoping that would add another layer of beauty and mystery to it.

Here’s the pitcher after being coated inside with my favorite deep red glaze, then sprayed on the outside with my aforementioned choices.  Although the picture’s fuzzy, you can see the subtle colors on the piece–it’ll look totally different after the firing.

Like this, to be exact:

It’s wrapped in a towel because I had to take it from the (still pretty hot) soda kiln on my way out to the Artwalk.  (The studio manager was pretty cool about opening the kiln early for me, but I won’t ask him to do it again.)

Love that deep red.  The mottled colors you’re seeing on the outside are from the ash glazes–the gray areas at the top are where I applied it a little thick.  Ideally, I’d like a little more stringing (the rivulets), but I’m learning.  Ash glazes can run if applied too thickly, so I think I erred on the side of caution.  I’m also still learning to take risks, I guess.

Now, if I had dipped this pitcher into glazes instead of spraying it, I would have had hard lines of color instead of gentle fading.  It’s all about your personal style–and I’m definitely the gentle-fading type.

Here are the little cups.  I love them.  (In real life, the cups match the pitcher.  Imagine colors somewhere in between the above and the below and you’ll have it about right.)

I’m definitely making more of these.  Maybe for myself.

Sadly, they are gone, and I don’t know who has them!  Some (I would argue lucky) person got them in a drawing at the Artwalk this last weekend.  Hopefully that person will find this blog and/or write me an email–I always love that.

Glazed pots, ready to go!  A day well-spent, with rewards to come.

At the risk of sounding dramatic, it’s time to admit failure.

Teapot 3! Meh.

Yes, yes–it looks fine, right?  Let me remind us that our purpose is to nitpick in order to improve.  So let’s criticize away, shall we?  (If you are in this for the pictures, or are otherwise uninterested in details of the ceramics process, feel free to skip my explanations.)  And before we despair of Teapot 3, I should say that all is not lost.

To explain my dissatisfaction, here is a fact:  there are several ways to apply glazes, among them dipping into the glaze (your pot goes directly into a bucket of glaze for a couple seconds, then you pull it out and let the excess run off), pouring the glaze into or onto the piece (especially for larger pieces), and spraying.  Each has its advantages.

For smaller pieces like mugs where I want a two-tone effect, or a surprising inside color, I will pour-glaze the interior, then dip the outside.

Poured inside glaze, dipped outside glaze.

Dipping usually gives you an even coat that is the perfect thickness to cover the clay, yet not so much that it will run down and ruin the piece (this of course depends on the glaze).  However, if you want a more subtle color gradation, spraying is the way to go.

An example of when spraying works. The green is sprayed over the white.

Dipping is hard to do with teapots if you want a different inside color, since it’s easy to accidentally let glaze come in the spout and spoil the inside.  On this one, I happened to envision a yellow interior, with a nice smooth gray exterior and a little bit of a red or green detail (like the effect on the above pitcher).  So I poured the inside with yellow, then sprayed the outside with gray-white, and a little red over that (the two usually react to create an olive-y green).

At least the inside looks nice . . .

The result?  Boring.  Visually, I was unimpressed–but then I touched its surface and my revulsion was confirmed.

I had good results from spraying my first teapot–see here, but since then I think I’ve applied coats of glaze that were too light, fearing to apply too much and cause running glaze (which sticks the pot to the kiln shelf and is the devil to remove from the bottom of the fired pot).  This would be fine if it were just a visual effect, but here’s the problem:  the tiny, sprayed particles of glaze–when they don’t have enough other glaze particles around them to melt into–had hardened into little, sand-like, make-your-skin-crawl-when-you-touch-them bumps on the surface (disclaimer: my [dramatic] theory of what happened–not scientifically proven).

Cringe-worthy bumpy glaze!

So–I know artists are their own worst critics, but I figure if I pick up one of my teapots (which I love) and immediately shudder at its texture, then someone else will do that too.

Here’s another embarrassment:

Slight cracks (!) at the base of the handle.  I feel like I have to admit this:  this means that I did not attach the handle perfectly.  Usually glaze will help cover up (and strengthen) such flaws, but as we’ve discussed, I didn’t put enough on.  Sheesh, potter.  Did I mention I’m still learning?

On the positive side, however:  the strainer is the nearest-to-perfect I’ve had yet!

The holes are beautiful and clear of glaze (barring one tiny bubble of it in the bottom-most hole).  This will help liquid to flow more forcefully through the spout, making pouring less dribbly, in theory.

Also a triumph is the angle of the spout.  Wheel-thrown spouts, since their particles are so tightly wound, untwist slightly in the high heat of the kiln, which can leave you with a wonky spout if you don’t compensate in the first stages of construction.  (Interesting fact:  every wheel-thrown pot untwists a little–you just can’t tell unless there’s a point of reference, like the spout-to-pot comparison.)

Before firing.

After firing.

As you can see, the end result has untwisted slightly too far.  It’s a guessing game anyway–I could have cut the spout at just a few more degrees of an angle and attained perfection in the end, but I’m happy with getting close.  (Tip:  taking before and after pictures is a good way to track your progress to the perfect angle!)

To conclude (and I’m sorry for the looooong post!), here’s why I’m not despairing of Teapot 3 yet:  I can re-fire it.  I’ll apply a little more glaze and let it go through the kiln again, hoping for a better result.  Then I’ll talk a lot about that too.

Thanks for sticking with me.  Hurray for teapots!