draped slab dish - crackle white

Last week I blogged about the draped slab dish I had made and decided to glaze with a glaze I hadn't used before "crackle white". That blog can be seen here. When the dish came out of the kiln, it simply looked like it was glazed with solid white glaze (the underside had a clear glaze, so the terracotta clay showed through, as it does on the edges as can be seen in this photo).

To complete the crackle effect, some India ink and a paintbrush are necessary.

The ink is painted on the plate.

Make sure the whole plate is covered,

Using a damp cloth, wipe the plate

but if any spots are missed, the process can just be repeated.

The finished plate has a lovely crackle effect on the white glaze.

Here is a detail of the crackle white on this dish!

draped slab dish - glazing

Of course it was all so long ago that I was at the ceramics workshop. Everything went into lockdown in March and while workshops haven't yet resumed, the facilitator returned, with other staff, to prepare the building for a return to activities in the coming weeks. This enabled loading the kiln a few times to fire pots that had been languishing on shelves for the past three months, including some of mine! 

For these terracotta draped slab dishes, I decided I would glaze the undersides with a clear glaze so that handling the finished dishes would not be a rough sensation.

I hadn't tried the crackle white glaze before but decided it was high time that I did! This glaze is a two-parter: the pot is glazed solidly with the one colour and then after firing India ink is rubbed in to produce the crackle effect.

It is not apparent, when the dishes are fired, that there is anything special about the glaze - it will just look white. This is the view from the kiln of one of the dishes.

The clear glaze on the underside makes for a smooth finish. Next week I will show what happens with the India ink and the crackle white glaze.

Draped slab ceramic serving dishes

In the late autumn last year I started making some draped slab serving dishes. My intention was to make them quickly and sell them at the xmas craft in December. Of course, things always take a bit longer than I expect, but they worked out fine. I had two formers, one of wood and the other of plaster, bowl-shaped and I overturned them in order to simply drape a slab over them, with a cling-film layer between the clay and the former.

I've been doing a new style of foot lately, in two pieces - two arcs making dishes "float" above a table surface.

I never took photos of how I attached the feet to the 2019 dishes, but I did for recent ones (note the date). After deciding where the clay arcs would be placed and tracing their outlines, the areas would be scored and slipped.

The feet are also scored and slipped, and after affixing to the dish, I lightly paddle them down (with a wooden paddle) in order to ensure that there is no air between the dish and the foot. This is usually apparent when some slip oozes from the joint.

Dried and ready for the first firing, here are two terracotta and one white buff draped slab serving dishes.

After bisque firing the pots are ready to glaze. I decided to glaze the underside of the dishes so the texture when handling wouldn't feel abrasive.

Though this may look like only one glaze, there are actually three different glazes on the terracotta dishes: a base layer of cobalt blue with splashes of two runny glazes (aquamarine and sea green).

I had already witnessed these colours interacting in a lovely way, and was not disappointed.

Both dishes were bought within two days of being for sale, so again I was pleased.

While I made a draped slab dish from white buffclay, I later made two smaller dishes from grey buff. I decided, since I was including them in the xmas fair that I would glaze paint a holly design on them.

I forgot to take pictures of the finished grey dishes before they sold, but they had a white glaze underneath the holly. The white buff dish simply has a clear glaze underneath the holly design. This dish is larger than the grey ones and I'll see it again on my Christmas table setting!

raku event!

In preparation for this year's October raku event I created two simple pinch pots and left large areas on both pots unglazed with the "smoker" in mind. I have found, at other raku events, that bright colours produced a pleasing outcome, so I decided to glaze my little pots with the apple green.

The raku day really is an event: interested participants are from four different workshops and come together for a day of fun, chat, and food as we have a pot luck lunch which we casually nibble on once the pots are in the raku kiln. There were two firings planned, so there was lots of time for great company and conversation among the participants.

Once the firing was complete, workshop facilitator James Hayes turned off the gas, opened the kiln lid and pulled individual pots out of the kiln

and transferred them to the smoker. At previous raku events people experimented with patterning techniques, such as applying hair and/or feathers, spritzing with water and/or sprinkling sugar on their pots, but at this event mostly everyone just wanted pots to go directly to the "smoker" (a lidded bin full of sawdust) for carbonising.

One of the participants was especially brave taking responsibility for quickly removing and replacing the "smoker" lid (NB all safety measures were adhered to, it just looks daunting!).

After about 20 mins in the "smoker" the pots were removed and individually dunked in a bucket of cold water.

The pots could not be just left in the water or there could be a risk of a hole being burned into the bucket or the water getting too hot to cool following pots. The yard is pebbled so the pots could be placed on the ground to continue their cooling.

Everyone was quite pleased with how things went on the day. These are the pots from the first firing.