The Agony and the Ecstasy

I love testing glazes. I love that glazes can be unpredictable and combining them can be surprising. My brother just asked me "Weren't you testing glazes last year at this time?" As if i will ever reach a point where I am completely content with the glazes I'm using. Nope. Well, maybe. But right now I like everything about glaze testing. The calculations, the measuring, the mixing, the dipping, the brushing, the numbering, the spreadsheets, the firing, glazing, firing again. Ok, it is time consuming. And I am hugely disappointed by the vast majority of tests in a kiln load. I go home feeling the weight of all the time spent with zero return. (In this case, it doesn't feel like enough to learn what glazes NOT to use.) But then i go back, take another look and you know what? this one isn't so bad... Maybe i should try this with that...And when you find a glaze that sings on a pot, it is magic.

Here are the worst 5 glaze tests from this load. Mostly too sheer, i don't like when you can see through glaze to a white clay body for no good reason. Or too runny. I'm looking at you, number 3.

These were the top 5 finalists! Out of these I hated two on pots and i THINK i'm still using two of them on actual pots. No, one. I changed number 3 here to have a runnier blue instead of that hard horizontal line. I'm reconsidering number 2 though. So pretty here! But without bright sunlight, it just looked dark.

#glaze #cone6 #testpots #pottery