tests and tricks

I have been tricked more than I care to say by small test tiles. Sometimes they just do not tell the whole story. Which is why I decided to use some tea bowls as a better indicator of a glaze's personality and to see how it behaves with other glazes. I think the idea to do this may have come from something I read on Cindy Gilliand's blog, Dirtkicker Pottery.  Now that I want to find it again, I can't, but I seem to remember that she took pictures of some of her pottery and wrote down the glaze and decoration she used so she would remember the combination.  This is sort of the same idea, though in this case I purposely set out to use the pots as test tiles. Being somewhat of a glaze addict, I have a lot of glazes.  I am not going to count the glaze buckets I have.  Too many to 'fess up to. What often gets interesting is how one glaze reacts with another, then throw in the slips, engobes, and washes and the possibilities multiply beyond my ability to keep track. Here's some pictures with notes added in:

 

These three tea bowls have glazes made from two different Albany Slip substitutes with a Chun glaze dipped over them.  I call the glaze "Plum" but these turned out dark brown to amber. One glaze is made with Laguna's Albany sub, one glaze is made with a recipe for Albany sub that I found, another is a 50/50 mix of the two.
I have another Albany sub that I've used for this glaze that really does yield a dark plum.  I was hoping the Laguna would give me the same results because the stuff is a pain to mix. 













Another attempt at organization-  attaching the recipe to the lid of the glaze bucket.  Somehow, a notebook doesn't do the job for me.  Over the past couple of years, when a glaze needs replenished, I put the recipe in a sandwich bag and tape it to the lid.  I also include the date, and any changes made to the mixture.  Works for me.












The top picture shows a few of the tea bowl glaze tests.  Some went to Empty Bowls, a few went to Riverside Artists Gallery and a few more to River City Farmer's Market in Marietta, Ohio.