Another new glaze

Look at that mirror finish on the center of that bowl. The glaze is Shadow Green from Seattle Pottery Supply. You get a fluid green with brown speckles if applied thinner and a metallic silver mirror finish where it pools. The "rust" on the rim is an iron red glaze that melted-in better than I had hoped for. After the bowl had cooled, took it out of the kiln and took it home, I kept hearing little ticking, tinging noises coming from the bowl!  This bowl was actually noisy and clearly not done with "business". I worried that the glaze might crackle and even crack apart! A day later it quieted down and the glaze is still beautifully intact. But should I be listening to my pottery now?

New glazes on a soup bowl

Another Senior Center bought some glazes to test. Seattle Pottery Supply glazes seem to paint on well even when mixed from dry powder. Here we have Burnt Orange and Turquoise. My favorite color is where the two colors combine in the grooved lip.

Lots of glazing

We have completed our soup bowls for the fundraiser. We've got quite a nice collection of bowl with some pretty glaze surprises. The top two photos are of one bowl that gave interesting results due to circumstances. I shall explain. This bowl has two layers of Celadon Froth and then a somewhat thick layer of Colonial white that was poured when everything was quite damp. Since that bowl seemed to be taking forever to dry, I moved it over to an adjoining table not realizing that a friend of mind would be kneading her clay. As the table shook, so did the glaze. But as the glaze slid down inside the bowl, the little green spots of glaze worked through the white layer. It was cool how it became immortalized in the glaze firing. I will have to try that again and see if I can repeat it.

The bowl with the leaf resist shows more green of the Celadon Froth than I had expected. Also, I am surprised how much of the dark brown slip burns away in the cone 5 firing. The result is attractive, none the less.  I will post the finished glazed results of the bottom photo next time.

Glazed soup bowls

 I have revisited some glazing combinations for these soup bowls. You never know what people will like, so variety is the way to go. The bowl above with the grooved lips have Colonial white over Turkish amber glaze cone 5/6.

 A heavy dose of cream over plumb make the bowls look like they are already full of soup.

I like the matte finish that bamboo ash matte glaze gave this bowl (not made by me).  The lip and the circles are an applications of an Iron Red glaze on top. It is a glossy glaze which is a nice compliment to the matte.

Soup bowls

I've been very busy working on soup bowls for a fundraiser. Here's just a few of them. I have much respect for those who make pottery for a living....it's hard work, no doubt about it, and I am not even near the iceberg, let alone touching the tip of it, as the expressions goes.

Television inspiration

While watching television a few weeks ago, I saw an infomercial for a stoneware piece of pottery! It has a hollow handle and a hole in the knob so the steam can vent while microwaving your food. So I said to myself, "I can make that." It soft cooks an egg nicely, but that is the only thing I've tried so far. The glaze on the inside is a nice shiny white....Colonial White by Laguna and the outside is my scrap glaze that is a years collection of cleaned glazing brushes. I like where white overlaps the brown and pulls some brown with it. I'll have to try that combination again. Just looking at this make me think of the future fall season that I've been looking forward to all summer. Utah had the hottest summer on record...3 straight months of over 90 degrees. I don't care how cold or how much snow we get...I will not complain! I promise!

A little bit of crackle

Wow, does time fly when you're not blogging. Here are some pieces I've completed as of late. The glaze is Laguna's Catalina Crackle and Tang Lime crackle. If your pieces lay flat, the glazes pool nicely and blend with the plumb glaze to soften the edges, which I like. If you put the crackle on a bowl, it runs like it's in a marathon! So my pottery mentor, Jack Jarvie, "tweeked" the Catalina Crackle for the bird. He used some feldspar (alkaline) so I was told. It did the trick and made the glaze behave itself at cone 5/6.