Hi all
Playing catch up with my blog at the moment as once again I can scarcely believe my last post was in February. The world has been turned on its head since then in a way none of could imagine…..but here on this little blog I shall concentrate on all things ceramic, and I hope for anyone reading this, it will provide a little respite or a point of interest to focus on for a while.
So, in the course of my work I am on occasions set a challenge, these tend to be a shape of pot I haven’t thrown before, or a new hand-drawn design, or in this first example a glaze colour. In the course of a conversation with one of my regular clients, I mentioned that I was looking forward to trying out a new red slip (roughly – liquid clay with a colourant) and she asked if I could ‘slip’ the inside of some terracotta cereal bowls for her.
I made the bowls and at the leatherhard stage (before first firing), I coated the inside of the bowls only with the red slip; after firing these came out a rather lovely salmon pink…….not red.
Undeterred I bought another red slip or engobe and tried again with another set of terracotta bowls and had…….a similar result, except these were more fuchsia and somewhat matt rather than glossy (photo seems to have taken some of the colour out! but believe me they are VERY fuchsia).
It then occurred to me that maybe the underlying terracotta clay was leaching through the slip and changing the colour. Bearing this in mind, I came up with Plan C which involved coating the inside of the bowls with off-white slip and once this was fired, painting on layers of my red underglaze, finishing off with a further layer of clear glaze. The results as you can see below were a raspberry red which my customer was really pleased with I’m glad to say.
I think next time I will make some small test pieces first…..guess that’s what I should do with any new glaze or slip, but patience never was my strongest virtue!
bye for now
Yvonne