Color change

After scouring resources and not finding a single source that said "bisque earthenware at 06 and glaze fire to 04" I worked out a deal with the studio where they will let me do the opposite (ie, bisque fire to 04 to burn off all the impurities that are messing with my glazes, and glaze fire to 05 or 06) as long as I store my greenware at home. Which is a challenge, but I am glad to do it in the hopes of finally getting a kiln load fired the way everyone other than them says earthenware needs to be fired. We are calling this an 'experiment' (I roll my eyes). The pictures today show a nice little white earthenware bowl with a stamped design I made using a cast pin made by someone I know in the SCA. I'm very happy with it, but the color chip at the end shows the color the glaze WOULD be if it had been fired correctly (in case this doesn't show well, the glaze is supposed to be light green, and it fired baby blue with a slight greeny tinge). I'm lucky the glaze acted so nicely on the white clay--this is the same glaze that turned purple and electric blue on red earthenware!

The good news is...

Of the four pieces that came out of the kiln today, only the sgraffito plate is useable. Which pleases me, as it took the longest to do. Not to mention that if SOMETHING hadn't come out right I might have burst into tears, or stormed off in a huff or something. I've included photos of my two most recent cups as well, mostly to cheer myself up. (I CAN make pots, I CAN make pots....)

Remember these?

I posted photos of the top two bowls after the bisque firing stage. They failed in the final firing! Pieces of slip and glaze are still flaking off, an hour after they came out of the kiln. The big bowl is another "Fail"-- for reasons I can't figure, the commercial glazes crazed over the slip I made--meaning, I'd eliminated the possibilities that had been causing problems before. [head, meet desk]

Bibliography addition

"Byzantine glazed pottery at the Benaki Museum"

Found it listed on their web site and ordered it last week, but alas things normally take 3-4 weeks from Greece so I expect to wait a bit. (I wonder why that is...stuff I order from the UK and France always arrives within 7 days...)

good tool, excellent results

I LOVE this tool. We had a home made version of this in the communal tub o'tools at the studio, and I started using it a few weeks ago. I love that it's multi-sided, and well balanced. The problem with the studio's version is that it's a light weight aluminum and dull as a board. The last two plates I trimmed came out looking very messy, I think the dull edge was dragging more than cleanly trimming, and with groggy clay the results weren't pretty. It took a while to find this version (a solid steel with excellent sharp edges) at a reasonable price. It's a Japanese kanna (not all web stores call it that...). The cheapest place I found it was Bailey Pottery (online), and it cost me less than $3.00. Of course there's also the shipping...so I ordered a few other things from them to make that part less painful. I got a couple of birch plywood bats, and am also very pleased with them. They're supposed not to warp, and they absorb water (I just don't *get* using plastic bats). Next time I'm at the studio I'll try to remember to take a couple of shots of trimmed items...

brief notes

It's been suggested to me that the weird glaze effects are due to the bisque stage happening at too low a temperature to allow all outgassing. This makes sense to me...but how do I convince the studio to bisque my stuff at 04? Maybe on occasion...like if I go on a binge and have a whole kiln load to go. Maybe if I save them some money on their electricity bills by getting people to unplug--or at least turn off--their wheels when they finish. But I digress.

I bought a bag of Campbell's lowfire white clay today, and it's fabulous.It is sturdy, but silky smooth. Such an extra pleasure given that Campbell's Virginia Red earthenware is so gritty I came to hate working with it.

small jug of some sort...

I didn't have the illustration with me at the studio today, but this didn't come out too far off. Can't complain about my memory today! Tomorrow I'll be back in the studio again (I took a couple of vacation days this week) so I'll put a strap handle on it, and paint some decorative stripes using underglaze.

Green gives you purple?!

Guess what happens when you put "Olive Green" glaze on top of red earthenware? Go on, guess. Think it just looks randomly dark (like it's supposed to?) NO! I got electric blue on top of purple! A nice effect, sure, but way out of place on middle Byzantine style bowls. Oi, the bright blue shows up even on the thinnest sgraffito lines. (head, desk).

I do rather like my very plain Byzantine cups and the yellow plate.

Two pots from Athens

I found a few photos on Flickr that someone took at the Byzantine Museum in Athens. The nice thing is that there are shots of the displays of Byzantine pottery. The bad thing is that they are low res photos, so I can't get good details on individual items. I love these two jugs, though. I tried replicating the one with the spout and painted decoration of eyes (which for some reason makes me think of an octopus) but the body collapsed while drying (actually, it started to slump on one side so I trashed it). I assume I let the clay get too wet while throwing. The other one, with the yellow stripes, I took a shot at yesterday. We'll see what happens...

Sgraffito in progress

So, how does one create sgraffito items like the bowls and dishes in the photo at the top of my last post? These pictures illustrate most of the process. First you throw the item using a dark colored clay. Then you coat the item with a layer of light colored slip (liquid clay). Then you wait for it to dry to leather hardness, at which point you get to bring out the sharp and pointy tools. I use a compass to draw nice even circles--and there are Byzantine pieces with compass wholes right in the center so we know they weren't just freakishly good at drawing circles. There are a variety of different tools to carve through the clay with, all which leave pretty rough edges and tiny clay dust all over, so a brush is useful to help clean up the piece as you go along. The plate and two bowls seen in the pictures have now been moved to the greenware shelf, where they'll finish air drying before being bisqued. After that, it's time for glazing...and the long, long wait until the studio has accumulated enough pieces to do a cone 04 firing (the final firing stage).

About those blue bowls--yes, that is a clay slip. The blue is made from adding cobalt (or so I'm told).