Unit 3.2 — Surface: stained slip & glaze research for ‘Caryatid’

Practical steps, inspiration and research goals

Marbling slip with stains, 75g of dry stain (mixed with water) stirred into slip

i like the two tones, glazing experiments and staining clay body (but used grubby rough buff)

two dips came out cloudy, colours sludgy from claybody and I added china clay, fired at home to bisque setting which is too low so hence cloudy and less bright colour — can refire

two clay bodies with raw glaze, I *think I fired to 1140, single firing

marbled slip cast mug (stolen) and demo of different glazing options with clear

mixing stains — about 75 g dry stain to 1pint of casting slip

firing notes, these are unfired

Some inspiration — specifically for the ‘Caryatid’ piece which I would like to be bright and shiny, as a way of re-see-ing her.

Goals include — more insight into raw glazing so I can fire once, getting particular bright colours and the right clear glaze, choosing an all over glaze for the caryatid, more experience with marbling the slip, time to work with colour and colour combos (pink with orange / blues with greens / purples with yellow)

Thomas Schutte, Lubna Chowdhary, Max Lamb

Rosemarie Trockel, Sandrine Pagny, my work, Max Lamb, Roger Coll, Lubna Chowdhary

my experimental work, James Rigler, my ‘floating totem’, Nic Deshayes, Richard Deacon (pink one IDK, from Frieze 2021)

Lynda Benglis

Lynda Benglis

Glaze fired cone 6 three cups — before and after, different application techniques

before firing, quite pale colours (which I like), the zinc free clear glaze i used which is supposed to be better on stained clay and underglazes as it does not get cloudy, I poured the glaze on 2 of three of cups, the other one I used a brush — i MUCH prefer pouring, I hate brushes and can’t be trusted to keep them in good condition — the poured ones turned out much better — I also remembered to turn the cup upside down so it didn’t collect in the bottom like recent mugs

fired at home kiln to cone 6, I like the contrast, the pink one was a mix of the two pinks and there is very little contrast, wish I did one with the white…can later, the pink is coming up quite peach (but I did add yellow and orange…dugh.). Pink cup had glaze poured on it, just once

the blue one (turquoise/chrome green and cobalt) came out the best, glaze application was poured and it’s pretty much perfect, I think maybe the cobalt is extremely strong; i brushed on the glaze on the green one and while it was lovely before being glazed, it’s a hot mess — but these are material tests so that’s fine — little bits of clay (could have sanded, something to experiment with) and the brushed glaze is yuck, I think there’s even a finger print, also the contrast is very faint, i would dial that up in the future

A little bit of a diversion from the project ~ but also tested the blue clay body (EW) and white (SW) with glossy and matte clear in the same firing— the blue body probably shouldn’t be fired so high (cone 6) and the blue gets quite dark, so I will fire lower when i do the larger vase thingee

Zinc free clear on first and second photo, I left quite a lot of glaze in that crack to see what it would do and it didnt make a cloudy mess so I am pretty much a big fan of this glaze, last pic is a matte clear, also a decent performance. I brushed these on, 2 coats, and I think i thinned the matte one which I know can get cloudy and knocks the colour back a bit

I took this well past firing range to cone 6/1200C, prefer the lighter shades

I’ll fire this guy to a lower temp, probably 1050, with zinc free glaze on the vessel part and the matte on the handle thingee, that was thrown, I was interested in some surface/making contrast with the handle and also the negative space it created over the vessel. We’ll see how it comes out…the coloured body does have a kiddie playdough feel that I like when it has press marks and isn’t over worked.

Working with an insurance piece & using it as a material test.

My mould is pretty fussy and was getting concerned that I may not be able to get a full one out SO I took part of the cast that tore (as I planned differently for next cast) and I sprayed it with underglaze as greenware, added a hole so I could hang it as a flatback if never got another cast, fired it and then re-glazed a section that went a bit awry (on the flat area, the colour went a bit wrong for me), then sprayed clear glaze over the entire thing.

I mixed the underglazes with water, used no medium as I was spraying them and was inspired by Phillipp Schenk-Mischke’s vessels in terms of surface and colour application. I like the idea of adding somewhat risky colour to an object that has had a lot of meticulous attention to it and considering adding in drips as well….would be nice to have two complete moulds to play with…

The mould needs to be tweaked a bit in an area that it is getting stuck — I had a lot of fettling repair work to do. There’s a separate blog on the casting process.

That peachy colour ended up odd, plus it flaked off — we think because it was fired flat and didnt get hot enough, it was used as a base across the entire piece, then I sprayed green from one direction and blue from another

experimented with a piece of hair as well, yellow mixed with white underneath and green from one direction and pink from another. These are stains I ordered for home (cobalt, lilac, off white, mint green, pink, orange)

Philipp Schenk-Mischke:

https://www.dezeen.com/2018/07/31/philipp-schenk-mischke-rca-graduate-process-plug-ins/