GLAZE BREAKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS

 SLAB FOOTED BOWLS

CERAMICS I

clay, glazes & oxides

Another prelude to building with slabs are these Slab Footed Bowls.

The slabs were used to try out their newly created Bisqued Stamps & Cylinder Rolls.

They were also used to learn the technique of using a rounded mold to form a bowl with.

There were many molds to chose from

 or they could have make their own out of crunched up newspaper and masking tape.

The underside of pre-existing bowls work well too turned upside down.

Senior Eunice Kim leads the way here with her striking bowl.

Loving the way our Turquoise glaze is breaking over top all the textural qualities

 she has stamped, rolled or thumped and dragged into her slab.

Learning and understanding glazing is challenging when you are high firing.

It's takes a good half year for the kids to "get it".

Breaking glaze means how it's going to behave when it melts and hits an obstacle

like a lump, crack, crevice, carved out or a stamped pattern area.

Look closely at the inside and outside of Eunice's bowl and you can see what I'm talking about.

Light areas, 

dark areas,

it's all cool and can be a bit uncontrollable.

Sometimes you just don't know what you are going to get,

which makes unloading a kiln a delightful surprise.

In this next piece by senior Vinaini Jayasinghe,

she has painted the entire piece with the oxide colorant called Cobalt Carbonate.

Then she has taken a wet sponge and wiped off the clay's surface 

so that the Cobalt says in the low areas.

You really notice it on the backside of her bowl below.

Because she has used a Transparent glaze

 we don't have to worry about how the glaze will break.

In senior Sahil Doshi's bowl you can really see the breaking.

It's so beautiful how our Cobalt Blue Gloss glaze goes black in the crevices and lightens slightly along the edges of the cervices.