Not Quite A Disaster

We won't even discuss one of the glaze-test bowls. It truly is a disaster. One positive note about it tho -- the "orange" i was trying for came out pumpkin. We now have a palette with 3 shades of yellow. The other test colors failed more or less miserably.

On to the second test bowl.

Ya gotta realize -- a red breaking yellow was expected from Clausen's "Temoku Gold". Red breaking yellow is entirely at the opposide end of the spectrum from black breaking gold.

It's a fact. Black is my least favorite color. ( Not only is the color hostile to the concept of optimism and positive attitudes but by common usage, as by the fundamentalists, the color has become censorious of other's values; not to mention that an abundance of the color black is downright depressing. )

So without too much stretch of the imagination, it can easily be determined that when the kiln was opened today and i found a primarily black bowl i felt that it was a complete disaster!

Oh no! Oh no! Doom and gloom are upon us. Ironically, it really was!

Scant seconds after opening the kiln, i discovered that the city plow had hidden my car behind a wall of snow. Again.

Well, i've already done the snow rant, so back to the black bowl.

Guess there are some positives about it, if you try hard to wrap your mind around 'positives'.

It really is a gold mist meandering through the black. Rather pretty actually.

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And while a lovely shimmering blue with turquoise crystals was expected on the outside, the rather u-glee moss-green-brownish breaking tan with metallized blackish markings (after a long period of mental "adjustment" ) is actually rather - well - interesting.
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Made a discovery. This glaze (Clausen's Orange glaze with blue crystals) reacts to lead pencil markings! It can be seen in the photo below, that the metallic black globbed onto every pencil line. That's intriguing, for it's never happened with other glaze applications. Usually the pencil sketches disappear when fired in the kiln!

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Hmmm ............. Back to the drawing board ...............
Tomorrow is a bisque-firing day. See if i can clear some more room on the holding-table for more pieces. Right now pieces are stacked 3 and 4 deep and there's not a spare inch of space left to stack more.
Happy glazing folks
Chae