Decorating Work With Colourful Glazes
The last process of my work, is painting on the colourful, shiny glazes and firing for a final time.
I created this process and as far as I am aware, nobody uses this technique. I am often approached by people who let me know, that they have never seen ceramics like this before.
Others say it must be Majolica, but it is not.
Majolica is low fired earthenware with the decoration painted onto an unfired glaze. This method results in a beautiful but more fragile piece than mine.
My process is painting the coloured earthenware glaze onto a fired and frost proof stoneware glaze. This results in a strong, durable and very colourful piece.
I wanted to write these last few blog posts to answer the eternal question: how long does it take to make my work. But is is so difficult to answer!
I have spent 34 years now, learning and developing my craft.
I do not sit down with a timer when I work, I look back and approximate how long I spent creating a piece.
The Europa Goddess Garden Sculpture for instance, took 8 weeks to:
Make the sculpture.
Dry out and bisque fire to 1000 degrees Celcius. 3 day firing cycle.
Glaze and fire to stoneware temperature 1260 degrees Celcius. 3 day firing cycle.
Mix my own coloured earthenware glazes.
Hand paint the sculpture
Fire to earthenware temperature 1070 decrees Celcius. 3 day firing cycle.
And added to this, I did not like the end result of Europa's firings, so I added more coloured glazes and fired for a 4th time. This is a not ideal because the clay gets stressed during the firings and can crack, and it also costs more.
Comments