These two are the survivors of a kiln disaster! The silvery glaze on the left is a fantastic glaze but it runs. I did know that and so as a precaution I put it on a tile. What I didn’t know was that if you use a roof tile it boils at <1200 C. The result that greeted me when I opened the kiln was very dramatic; a solidified mass of weird bubbly gloop all over the kiln shelf and dripping onto the kiln floor. I didn’t have the heart to record the full horror but I suppose following the premise of my blog, Triumphs & Disasters, I should have done. The pieces I’d fired had come to rest at peculiar angles still attached to the now solidified mass. A hard lesson learnt!
I was able to remove the material from the kiln floor without too much damage but the kiln shelf was a right-off. The next job was to chip off the residue from the pots which resulted in the lid inner becoming detached, well broken actually. I have now replaced it with a wooden bung to hold the lid in place. The outcome of some considerable time spent grinding the residue from these two pots can be seen in the top right photo. So the fronts and sides were spared and just the backs retain the evidence of my mistake as a useful reminder.
Better success with this next pot which was initially Shipwreck on a white clay body but came out a bit dull. A second glazing and firing with a Laguna mix overlain with Midnight Rain produced a stunning result but regrettably not shown to its best here but very pleasing.
5p Productions 