When I started to mix the dozen glazes to use on this round of work, I thought I knew what I wanted. I was going to have a coloured glaze inside and over the eyes and a clear glaze over the underglazed parts. I wanted to give people a way to distinguish one cup from the other in a social setting like those little plastic rings that get put around the stem of formal wine glasses. Then it came to me. What I really needed was a set of transparent colours. The black would show through and the cups would be differentiated by colour.
I kept the stains to very low percentages. Some colours were strong enough with a mere 1.5% but others needed 3%. I also used a few rare earth oxides at half the strength I normally would. Just enough to define the colour but not enough to cloud the black.
Saturday was cut off day for underglaze. Didn’t get to all the forms. Hope to have three of the nine shapes good to go when the kiln is unloaded. A respectable launch for the product line with more to follow in the coming weeks.
I split the surface work in half between black lines on a white background and the reverse. So within each colour of cup there are two choices. I added a few black and whites as well. Not sure how many combinations will come out successfully but I will have a set of more than twenty uniquely coloured cups. Bowls too just not so many.
I fired nineteen of the cups in the test kiln this week while I was getting everything else ready. The remainder of the work just fired off in the large kiln this morning. Those will be out tomorrow.
I should have just enough time to smooth the rims, photograph, price, pack and get it all to the gallery for the opening Thursday evening.
