Yes, thankfully the biscuit firing turned out well. No cracks or glaze seepage 😅.
It can be the case that you spend hours on end making and then glazing a piece, only to lose it instantly with a dodgy firing. This was a slow, low biscuit firing at around 950°C, and I´m really pleased with the underglaze colours (some of which I was trying for the first time).
The piece that has taken me an absolute age to carve and glaze using various methods, including scraffito, has come out really well considering the bowl itself is reasonably thick. It´s part of our "Seascape" range and will be going up on the www.blendedmonkey.co.uk site as soon as it´s had its final firing where it will be provided with a transparent glaze and then fired at 1200°C. That will really bring out the colours!
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| Seascape bowl after biscuit firing |
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| Seascape bowl before biscuit firing |
Everything was pretty much bone dry before I loaded the kiln, so that´s helped matters too. If you put something in the kiln that has too much moisture in it, you´ll basically end up with it cracking or, even worse, exploding in the kiln and taking out anything else that´s sitting alongside it on the kiln shelf - not a fun experience. Had a few of those in the past 😒. So now I´m super wary and I always make sure that everything is totally dry before I submit it to the firing stage.
I´ve been playing with some really nice underglaze colours too, including these purple / lavender bowls which I´m rather fond of - can´t wait to put the final transparent glaze on them.
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| Biscuit-fired purple underglaze |
Got a fairly busy weekend ahead, but hopefully I´ll have some more time in the studio so I can get the transparent glaze on the biscuit-fired pieces and also start working on a new multi-media piece of wall art that Simon and I are collaborating on. It´ll be nice to do some handbuilding again 😊.
If you haven´t already checked out our Twitter, please take a look @blended_monkey
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| Graded blue underglaze |
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