Ah, I have not blogged in a while. Wow, sense my last blog, the biggest and saddest story is the loss of my dear Mother Sally Sue Herr. I was fortunate to spend some quality time with my Mom before she succumbed to cancer on December 9th. What a tragedy to see some one you love die due to cells gone bad in their body. I went back twice to see Mom and was there when she passed. I miss her dearly and think of her every day.
Since my Mom's death I devote all my time to creating pots. I participated in a local holiday faire and was juried in to a local cooperative art gallery. Internet sales are consistent as well. I create and post as I go along. I find inspiration it what I love and I feel blessed every day to be able to create.
Sense my last post, I was working with porcelain and doing sgraffito with more success in finding a terra sigilatta color and glaze that worked with my clay body.
Thanks to John Britt for doing the work on finding glazes that don't craze. John does the hard work and I pay with for the effort. Thanks John.
Now I moved on to working with a red clay body. I bought 500 pounds. In the beginning, I was dubious and wondered what I did. I knew the background would be different for sgraffito work, so I needed light terra sigilatta colors. The first tests revealed that 3-5% mason stains were inadequate to pop thru the glaze I was using. Later, I read a few articles about 1:1 lithium carbonate and gersley borate wash. Here are my results.
I am super happy with these results. I was looking for a worn or distressed look and a more atmospheric affect, that you would get in a salt or soda firing. This led me to play around with abstract forms. Here is a set of vases that I layered dark terra sigillata under lighter terra sigs, sanding and scratching in between applications.
At this point in time, I have about 50 pounds left of this cone 6 Oregon Red clay. I really enjoyed working with it. I will get more in the future. But for now, back to porcelain and experimenting with lightly colored chuns, oribes, and celadons.
I hope all is well in my readers world. Cheers, Jeff
