New Glazes Tiles

Doing glaze tests is a tedious thing....

I can see why people find one or two glazes they like and just do everything with those.

But that would be too easy......


Testing glazes means a lot of stirring, sieving, dipping, drying, labeling, shifting buckets around, making notations on my test record pages.

Some tests were about new glazes; some were just checking old ones that might have changed over time.

I used to make my tiles really small because I put a string through the hole in the top and tie the tile to the glaze bucket. If the glaze is in a jar, I fasten the tile to the side with a big piece of transparent package tape.

I also use a Sharpie to label the bucket or jar in big letters. Saves a lot of time when you're trying to hunt down a glaze.

Bigger tiles mean more room for notes. I use any underglaze to do this. Just a dot on a piece of paper or spare yogurt lid is fine and handy for the underglaze. I also like the fine limner brushes to do the lettering with.

So, I'm rather sloppy when it comes to making these. Speed is the thing here, not perfection......

----------Of course, just as soon as I wrote this and fired the kiln, the thing overfired. The thermocouple failed. Pots welded themselves to the shelves and the witness cones are beautiful,  pearly puddles. 

A trip to Clay Art Center is in order. New shelves, new thermocouple, and while I'm at it, some grinding stones. 

Pottery:  It teaches you how to deal with failure and move on.

ALL the time.