Pottery Tea Bowls Galore!

Amaco's Fire Brick Red over Lustrous Jade

So I have been exploring the tea bowl form lately, here are the results! What I love about the tea bowl form is the multiple uses it can be used for. The ceramic piece can be used as a coffee or tea cup, and it also could be used as a small serving bowl. You might also notice that I have finally broken down and bought a professional backdrop. I find that the investment in the backdrop has been worth it though as it has helped generate more sales on my etsy website.

My dry Amaco glazes came in last week, and it has made it a lot easier to glaze. Having the ability to dip the piece in the glaze instead of brushing on the glaze has created better looking glazes in my opinion, as they appear much more uniform.

Vert Lustre over Jade

I have also been experimenting with glaze combinations using Amaco's Lustrous Jade glaze as a base glaze. I have added captions to the pictures of what the glaze painted on top of Jade is, so that if you are looking to repeat any of the combinations you can see what to expect.

Iron Lustre over Jade

Tenmoku over Jade

Thanks,

 

Mark Barta

 

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New Cone 6 Glaze Combination

This weekend I tried a new cone 6 glaze combination, Amaco's Chun Plum under Amaco's Iron Lustre. The combination came out a little bit different than what I was thinking it would turn out, but I like it. I think it will be a good holiday glaze due to the green and red nature of the glaze. Below are some pictures of an organic platter that was glazed with this combination.

I hope everybody has a great Thanksgiving!

Thanks for reading!

-Mark Barta

 

Posted with Blogsy

Raku!

Brackers hosted a Raku firing event this past weekend and I want to share the results!

The first of two pieces that I raku fired is a 1 foot tall bottle form. When performing a raku firing, you superheat the piece of pottery to a couple thousand degrees, then while it is red hot and glowing you open the kiln and pick up the piece with tongs. Once you have a good grasp of the piece, you place the piece into a bin of combustible material and it instantly ignites into a fireball. While the fire is going, you place the lid on the bin to create a seal, all the oxygen is then burned out of the bin and the fire goes out, this creates a reduction environment. Once cooled, you pull the pot out of the bin and quench it in a water bath, solidifying the metallic results. As this was a rather large piece, you can imagine how nervous I was to drop the piece when it was molten hot and break it, but luckily all went well and I got a great piece out of it.

 

 

 

Another view of this piece is on the right.

 

 

 

 

The second piece of pottery I Raku fired was a platter. I especially like the teal tones that came out on the piece.

I hope you enjoyed these two pieces!

-Mark Barta