potter’s choice – mud&string

Every potter loves a successful firing! I get a little anticipatory rush when it’s time to open my kiln and see whether or not the kiln gods have smiled upon me. This time, they smiled. 🙂🙂🙂🙂

Starting with the lower left pot, here are the glazes I used: Copper Red, the pot above it is wearing June Bug, the middle pot is glazed with Blue Stone and its neighbor wears Blue Spark. The upper left, black pot’s glaze is Vintage Gold.

Not what you expected – am I right? Here’s an up close and personal look at each one….

All glazes are from the Amaco Potter’s Choice line. I’ll be adding these to my rapidly expanding glaze collection without a doubt!

All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, observation is also invention. Rudolf Arnheim

Ever glazed a bowl or knitted/sewn a project that you had such high hopes for that, on completion, was so ugly it was a real challenge to NOT throw it in the trash or banish it to the recesses of
of your darkest closet? Let me tell you about my latest bowl of shame………

There was nothing wrong with the naked bowl, one of my better ones IMO. Sorry guys, I took no photos of the first glazing. Too painful. 😜

The first glaze consisted of Toasted Sage poured into the bowl and swirled to cover, followed by Oatmeal brushed on the rim x3. I laid a band of Textured Turquoise below the Oatmeal rim inside. I then brushed the outside with Spectrum Cinnamon Ripple x3. When the glaze was dry, I fired this bad boy to cone 5. All I can say about the final result was YUCK and double YUCK. I tried to console myself by saying we can’t all be beautiful and made up my mind to keep it around for a little while; sometimes a glaze combination will grow on me. Not this time.

I decided to refire it, using a new glaze I got for Christmas, a Hot Pink by Spectrum. So, I just sort of slapped a few coats of this pink on it all over and fired it again. BTW – all glazes are Amaco Potter’s Choice unless specified otherwise. This glaze was a cone 9/10 and since I like to live dangerously, I fired to cone 10. 🥵

Here’s the surprise: