Friday, July 27, 2007

Glaze day, water permitting

Today I'm going into the studio to glaze my pots, that is, if the water main has been fixed and we have running H2O. It is hard to glaze without water to wipe up the mistakes (and there are always many).
The last batch of babies came out of the fire looking kind of sad. The pots were cute enough when they went in, but some of the glazes were contaminated, and some were too thick, some were just not quite what I was expecting. That's shared glaze for you- I'll call it the Goldilocks Effect- some too hot, some too cold, some too big- but occasionally one is just right.

The moral of the story is " Make your own, honey". Then hide them.
I have a nice white white, and a very lavender lavender, a green salt and a water blue for the ones I do today. I'm going to mix up a blue celadon and this time spray them all on.

The thing about clay is that you can't get too attached to the objects you make. It's the perfect medium for those who have to learn to let go- the material is unpredictable, it has it's own personality and issues, it has to be handled with care and then after it looks like the worst is over, you put it in a windowless kiln and light a 2300 degree fire. Then you wait for a few days to see what what happens.

Sometimes it's bad:
Sometimes it's good:





I will sacrifice a soy green tea latte to the glaze goddess today. Perhaps it will please her.