TESTING TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

Last Monday I decided to go ahead and throw all the pots I needed for two commissions, a 6 piece jar set (canisters) and four large plates meant to be hung on the wall. The throwing went smoothly but not so much in regards to the tooling. We lost power here in central New York State from Tuesday to Thursday which meant covering things up really well and turning my attention to some tasks that didn't need any electricity, namely making up some slips, one glaze and a group of tests including a slip test to try to correct some recent problems with the slip staying on the various clay bodies that I use.    

Most likely my testing trials and tribulations don't add up to much in the cosmic scheme of things but even so, I would like to get things worked out and with no power, this was the perfect time. At issue is an older crackle slip formula that I used for quite some time and it was fool-proof, that is until now. In the past year of so the slip comes off the pot in the bisque or in the glaze firing which is even worse. I will mention for the record, the materials used have not changed at all nor has the clay, it has literally just stopped working. What you see here is my latest test of the formula which has had the calcined material increased a bit more and I will test the slip on wet clay, dry clay and bisque clay pods to get some results, the cracking occurs during the drying, bisque and firing processes.   

The pods are marked appropriately and one pod from each group will be fired ultimately without any glaze to see what happens to the slip and whether or not it comes off or is easy to pry off sans glaze. Along with the unglazed pods to be tested will be a pod from each category that will have a transparent glaze, either clear or Oribe to gauge how they react and whether or not the slip stays on the pods (or pots down the road). I know this doesn't really amount to a hill of beans but it is just one of my current conundrums and I would like to be able to strike a line through at least this to do item as soon as is possible. The testing continues and this was a good use of down time even if there were few other choices to keep busy in the studio.