The waiting is the hardest part...

The kiln shut off about an hour ago. It won't be cool enough to open until morning. The shells are all glazed with layered glazes. Most of the combinations are from Opulence in their reduction look high-fire cone 6 glazes. I also threw in a blue from Georgie's that I've never really liked by itself. (It looks a little too much like blue spray paint.)

It's a pretty big risk firing all of the shell vessels with glazes that I don't know very well, but not knowing what I'll see when I open the lid is part of what makes glaze firings so much like Christmas. When I bought the Opulence glazes at NCECA last year, they had a display of test tiles on their table showing how the glazes looked layered with each other. There were no combinations that I strongly disliked, so I can't really say that I'm worried about the results. Likewise, the Georgie's glaze is very stable and I've fired it in combination with one of the Opulence glazes in the past with good results.

We'll see in the morning whether I should have stuck more with known glazes. The sad part is, if I really like one of the combinations, I'm not going to have any way of knowing without further experimentation how to repeat my results. I guess that it's a good thing that I have so many bisqued beads hanging around the studio. I can test combinations on beads if there's something that I really want to duplicate.

Filed in: Shell_Vessels Kilns Firing Glazing