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Today Jano and I unloaded the kiln containing most of the bronze-wash items. We were both very pleased. I only had the two items in the kiln – the beech trees, and the lower part of a lidded jar. The jar is glazed with Floating Blue to cone 6, single dip all over and double dip on the top. Very happy with how the glaze broke on the ridges. I haven’t thrown anything for two years, but enjoyed the 3 items I made. The others will be fired tomorrow.
Here are the bronze trees and the jar.
This semester began rather slowly as I tried to find a design for Rick’s kitchen back-splash. I played with the idea of 3D fish that might overlap, and so made a series of plaster molds. One from a rather decorative stiff fish and the other a more realistic fish of varying sizes. These are the fish. They are glazed with a Bronze wash containing copper and manganese.
Somehow the idea of the 3D fish didn’t really work out, but I did discover that if I pressed the fish into an irregular shaped slab of clay, the effect was a pleasing fossil-like texture. Here is the result, again with the bronze wash. The photographs gives the impression of a convex image but the fish are actually concave.
The success of this wash, to my eyes anyway, has encouraged me to apply it to both the beech and the oak sculptures. The beech trees come out of the kiln tomorrow and the oak trees later in the week I hope. I has taken all of today to paint these trees!
As the 3D fish design was going nowhere, I sorted out some odd pieces of clay. One such piece was some Dove porcelain that ended up as a flat thin irregular slab. It reminded me of bark, as the dry surface and wet inside created the effect shown in the photograph. I manipulated it, painted it with under-glazes and covered with a Sherrill clear glaze.
The other porcelain slab, created similarly, I glazed with a Holly Gold glaze.
In the past few weeks the back-splash tiles are coming together. I first created a line drawing of the intended design…
…which translated into a 6 tile design, repeatable in a half drop pattern. The tiles were created first as one big lino-cut that was then cut into 6 and mounted on wood blocks. I have an antique book press that was used to press the tiles. The clay used was M370 or Navaho Wheel.
I made some quick test tiles with glazes…
… and consequently made 100 tiles last week, which have dried between two sheets of drywall to prevent warping. This week they will be bisqued and next week glazed. Rick will hopefully like one of the 5 intended variations – full colour under-glaze with 520 Blue border on M370, Jano White on Navaho Wheel, black under-glaze scraped off on M370, bronze wash on Navaho Wheel, and 520 Blue perhaps with a 520 White border on M370.
That’s about it. So many other adventures in the past 3 months. This year is flying by.
Creative Musings 