What else? I've been doing some clay shrinkage and glaze tests at Central TAFE (CIT) dry colourful ones, mostly in oxidation and am very keen to see the reduced glaze tests below which will come out of the gas kiln tomorrow. I've been wanting to do those ones based on Anne Hirondelle's earlier work for years but my own gas kiln had not been installed. Fingers crossed for an exciting result with these tests.
My large platters have been drying out slowly and are finally in the bisque kiln. Just allowing myself to be loose and to play with ideas I'd been too busy for has allowed a whole new style to evolve - I didn't see that coming. I've been hand building the platters with Walkers BRT clay with is nice and groggy and robust, but cracks if left in a draught, guess how I know that.
I had some rubber stamps I had carved to hand and pressed the stamps into the soft crunchy clay around the rim to see what happened. I liked it, so I printed into the clay surface too. These are about 60cm wide. Quite a contrast from my usual uptight porcelain nest forms aren't they?
The motifs are a bit folksy and reminiscent of European wood carvings, which makes sense given they were carved from rubber blocks, a lovely task on which to spend time.
In fact the platters were designed to receive certain glazes - dry and textural and I have to keep reminding myself of this to stay on task a little. It is hard to stop carving rubber blocks when you get started.
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