Glaze Day

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Saturday, August 3, was Glaze Day. As it happened, I only had a single thing to glaze: my teapot. My spoon rests were still being bisqued, and everything else was fired using an alternative firing method (my flower was still in the process of being soda fired, in fact), so the teapot was it. This turned out to be a very good thing, as it took an inordinate amount of time to finish the teapot. I painted it with underglazes, so it was a very meticulous and time-consuming affair, as I had to make sure all the nooks and crannies were colored, that there was even coverage and no splotches, etc. I was at it for at least 2 hours, I think. I painted the eyes blue, with black pupils and lighter blue lines in the irises, so they aren't so monochromatic. I painted the hair and eyebrows black, then added small lines of brown, to try and give them some depth. Finally I painted the body and trunk light grey; I tried to thin out the glaze a fair amount as I was a little worried it might come out too dark.



Next I dunked the teapot and its lid in clear glaze, in order to give it a nice finish. The lid fit loosely and was able to be fired separately from the teapot, so I was able to avoid having a huge unglazed area on the teapot's top which would have been required for them to be fired together. I didn't glaze the under side of the lid just in case it came out a bit tight and required sanding down to fit. I then put the teapot aside in a designated area. All of the pieces painted with underglazes and then glazed with the clear glaze will be fired to cone 8 instead of cone 10 like usual, because the underglazes are technically low-fire glazes, so firing them to a lower temperature will give them a better chance to come out bright and gorgeous.

Other than that, the only thing I really did was take Cthulhu and the horsehair piece home, to clean them up a bit. They both had bits of ash stuck to them from all the combustibles. I used a feather duster and a soft cotton rag on the horsehair piece, per the advice of the afore-mentioned extremely experienced student, and I (very gently) scrubbed Cthulhu with a toothbrush. Cthulhu had some pretty stuck on pieces of burnt paper, so I've been advised to use the toothbrush plus baking soda on those areas. I'll have to be quite careful though: if one scrubs too hard, the glaze itself can come off of the clay. Of course the great thing about raku is that even if I did screw up the glaze, the piece could be re-raku'd. It's not as much of a one-shot deal as the usual high-fire process.

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