Well, that’s it. It’s done. I’ve finally managed to mix enough glazes to fill my kiln. Ok, fill is a strong word – this is not the most efficiently packed kiln known to man, but I’ve done enough tests that there is a reasonably acceptable amount of stuff in there. Plus, I really need to see the results now in order to make decisions over the next set of tests. So if you want to know what I have been doing in April, it’s mainly been weighing out various ground of bits of rock in the hunt for some nice glazes for pieces old and new!!
At this stage I’m excited, anxious and very very tired! Excited to see what might come out the kiln, anxious that I might not find what I’d hoped for and tired because glaze testing is an insanely time consuming exercise which has taken days. (Really, truly, absolutely hours and hours.) It’s like making dozens of mini cake mixes, in order to see which your favourite cake is but working with lots of powdered rock and with the serious risk that if you over-cook any of your ‘test tiles’ that the mix will run off and adhere itself somewhat irreparably to the kiln shelf. (I learned that hard way in my first test firing in February.) However, even the mistakes are useful (if a little painful) and now, two months on (and armed with a colour coded spreadsheet listing all my planned tests) I’m on the cusp of test run number two.
I’m looking primarily for whites and blues – both to replace glazes that I’m using on existing ranges and to develop some new ranges – but I’ve got a few greens in there too. It’s all a big experiment. You can buy books with glaze recipes in – and there are oodles of recipes on the internet – but there’s no guarantee that you’ll get the same result with your ingredients, your clay, and your kiln, so everything needs to be tested in all amounts before it goes near finished pieces.
As ever, I’m hugely grateful to Mary Chappelhow at Interlude Ceramics who very kindly pointed me in the right direction to start with. She also provided the wonderful description of ‘starved’ in relation to one of my first test glazes that I really loved, but which hadn’t matured enough. I’ve made a few tweaks to it this time around – so fingers crossed!!