Welcome to my first update for May! It’s been a good month so far – following my feature in Outdoor Swimmer magazine, I have sold a number of swimming mugs, which has been a really lovely boost. I’m working on a further batch for early June, but there are a few still available in the shop if you’d like one.
Now that excitement is calming down, I am trying to finalise another making cycle – and importantly finish some commissions!! The first step is filling the kiln for a bisque firing. This is the first firing to around 1,000 deg C that turns what I’ve made into ceramic. I’ve got the last few items drying as I type, and I’m hoping to load the kiln ready for firing this week.
Once that’s complete, the next stage will be another glaze firing – whoo! As I talked about in April, I’m working on developing my own glazes. I was really pleased with the various tests that came out of the kiln last month – lots of lovely blues and a good selection of whites. It’s now time to scale these up from test tiles to actual pots, at which point I’ll start to get a real sense of how the glazes look and feel and function in real life.
It’s hard not to get obsessed with glazes. Even white is not straightforward. There’s all sorts of questions – just how white is it, how shiny, how opaque? I mixed a range of tests last month, so have everything now from a bright, shiny white through to a soft, matt cream. (I wasn’t specifically in need of a soft matt cream but I’ve fallen for it hard, and now need to think of what it might work on – or what I could design for it.) I’ve put all my test pots on display in my kitchen and over the last couple of weeks I’ve been looking at them from time to time, handling them at different times in different lights to see what I really liked. Having done this, I’m going to commit actual pieces to two potential whites for functional pieces (both slightly off white – one with flecks of iron, one with hints of blue) and do some further tests on two other whites. I’m also taking a bit of a risk and making another off-white (more on the yellow line) for a commissioned piece, and really hoping that it scales up true from the test.
On the blues, to be honest, I’ve been a bit overwhelmed. I want different blues for different ideas and in theory I can mix as many as I like – but in practice, I’ll run out of space, time – and it will start to get a little expensive! So I’ve decided to start somewhere with three really different blues from the range I have. I’m going to scale up a pastel blue on a bud vase, a bolder, stronger blue on a yarn bowl and then something a bit special on a mug, paired with a misty white. I want something that looks like the lake in the morning before the sun comes up. So just the moon on a stick then…. I’ll let you know how it goes!