Glazing Day - First Time

I came to the lab today because Monday will be the first glaze firing for the semester, and I wanted to glaze all my pieces and make sure they got fired. It’s exciting glazing my work, but it’s hard to visualize exactly what the end result will be. I have to wait and see!

Since I didn’t know what to expect, I glazed using solid colors: Temonko (black), Rod’s Clear and Blue Satin (dark blue). My plan was to use single colors on the whole piece and wait and see how the glaze looks. Then, for the next round of glazes, I would be better prepared to expand my repertoire.

After I glazed my work, H. came in, riding on a yellow, 600cc, single-stroke street bike. He cam into the glaze room and encouraged me to use more colors then just one single color, saying it would be too boring to use just a single color. Okay, so then I went back and lightly scrubbed off some of the glaze I just applied. My strategy was then to use an additional color to highlight certain areas of my work. I’ll post some pictures after the pieces have been fired.

Now, a single color does make the piece less interesting. The surface needs to come alive and be visually interesting, and ceramic pieces drenched in one color are first visually overpowering, and then your eyes quickly fatigue, and you don’t pay attention to the work anymore.