Looking Twice

This ceramics session has been terrible in getting work back from the bisque firing and double that to get anything back from the glaze kiln. I’ve made several items but they are very slow in being fired. I did get 2 orbs back. The first is glazed in Phil’s Celadon with Oribe accents. The clay body was a white stoneware and porcelain mixture (2:1). It is my interpretation of Alisphaera unicornis, a coccolith found in the W. Mediterranean in the Alboran Sea. The Alboran Sea has a huge variety of coccoliths and is home to many of my favorites. This particular orb didn’t come out of the firing as I would have liked. It is glazed in Oribe which generally fires a pretty translucent emerald green. This time the orb was severely underfired resulting in the Oribe turning a matte mauve color. All I can do is shrug and repeat the mantra “It is what it is.” When I first started blogging (way back in the dark ages) one of the first people to comment on a post was a young lady. She was funny because she took me to task for not being happy with my end result due to a kiln error. She commented “if you are dissatisfied, then it is not finished. If there is something you can do to make it better…. it will never be complete until it’s been done.” I was a little confused because once a piece is fired there is very little you can do to correct the glaze. Then I visited her blog and discovered that she was a photographer. Of course photography can and does alter their end product with all kinds of manipulations.

My second orb was glazed in Royal Blue. I had thinned it to get the effect of a glaze wash where the color is only evident where it settles into textured spaces or where it is applied heavily. It was an experiment using this technique. I’m happy with the outcome as it is a good mimic of the discontinued glaze Chun Blue. Anyway the orb is my interpretation of Codonella cratera, a coccolith found in Lake Schierensee near Kiel in Germany. I don’t often find coccoliths in fresh water but they do occur!