Boring Art, Boring Life: Things going wrong in ceramic town?                                                  

Things going wrong in ceramic town?

    
kjh;kh

It has been a few days since I posted the goings on of the ceramics room. Teaching is going well, I am finding it quite relaxing and enjoyable. The students are pigs, probably as piggish as I was when I first started working in clay. They just don't seem to understand how to cleanup. Smears of clay everywhere...clumps in the sink, etc...

 
So what the hell have I been doing, a variety of different things. The first on the list are some images from the throwing demo -- incidentally the only type of throwing I can do at all, without looking like a lady.
I picked up a pug of Plainsman F96, a cone 6 clay with light grog in it. I made a few mugs to replenish the dwindling selection at home.
 
So the mugs are coming together well, I have my eye on a translucent green glaze and another glaze that breaks rust colour over details.  I made about 8 of these ad few smaller bowls for a glaze demo. Looking through these images now, I realize that these handles are CHUNKY. Well at least the handles won't be the first thing to break -- that'll be my soul... we all know it.

Not everything is peaches and cream in the land of Tir na nog. The box I was working, you know the ceramic box I was making for paintbrushes, didn't survive the firing. At first it looked great!
The cream breaking rust glaze did an amazing job of bringing out the fine details of the lightly embossed bamboo leaves but the lichen glaze fluxxed into the surface of the cream breaking rust and didn't creep as much as I wanted. No matter the iron oxide design brushed on the surface of the glaze does look good, if not a bit on the nose.

However, as mentioned not all was well in the land. There must have been a hairline fracture created by rapid drying or improper handling. I developed into a cooling crack. I wasn't there to see what the internal kiln temperature was but I think around 600 F. It definitely is not dunting as the clay body was only fired to cone 6 and it is a cone 10 clay.

You will probably remember the coiled pot that I was working on, the demo piece. Well I decided what I would make with it. I am sure some people will immediately recognize the form, others.... not so much.
 











 
Got it yet?












Labels: , , ,