Comment

Comment by susan claysmith on April 12, 2011 at 8:29am

Hi Denice - My clay has a very fine texture and I use fine sandpaper with a light touch when cleaning off the excess slip.  On this piece I simply mixed small amounts of dry mason stains with equal parts bentonite then added water to get the right consistency.  The bentonite helps keep the application more stable and makes for a less powdery surface as they dry.  The stains were applied on bisque.

I laughed at your comment about the failing eyesight...  I's sure that there are a lot of people using this site, myself included, that can relate!

Comment by Denice E. Demuth on April 12, 2011 at 6:18am

Do you mix your own under glaze with mason stains? I mix almost all of my glazes but buy premixed under glaze, it"s more consistent than anything I've mixed.  I have done some work with the Mishima technique in the past but didn"t know that it was Mishima until I started reading about it. I also ended up sanding, it sounds like you clay is fine texure and won"t scratch to bad. I"m just about finished with my Majolica phase.  I love detail oriented work but my bi-focal prescription get stronger every year, I need to change to a more organic style. I noticed at seminars that older potters work are looser less detailed, someone said that they had learned over the year to relax and be one with the clay.  I think that there eyesight was starting to fail.  Denice

Comment by susan claysmith on April 11, 2011 at 8:34pm

Thanks for your comment and compliment Denise!  I have done some Majolica on a low fire red body as well and plan on doing some more.  Although using glaze stains on a white body under a clear glaze is certainly a very different technique than Majolica, the ability to approach decoration in a more 'painterly' way is quite similar and the range of colours available using stains is still excellent at cone 6.

The MIshima techniqe is quite new to me although I have done a fair amount of scrafitto on low fire, and the mishima techniqes is like doing scrafitto, but filling it aferward with a black slip.  I had read some articles by other people on the technique and tried wiping the surface slip off at leatherhard, rather than sanding it, but didn't have good luck with wiping.  I like the look of the scrafitto-filled lines.  These photos aren't very good, but I will post a close up which will make it easier to see.  I am pretty happy with how the glaze stains are working out and the way I used them was pretty uncomplicated.  I had never bothered spraying on glazes before and am happy with the results.  Had I tried to dip the outside of this piece rather than spray, I would have likely contaminated my glaze, and spraying was safer in terms of avoiding messing up or smudging the areas that I had applied stains to.

The cone 6 porcelain body will be tough and durable for 'day to day' functional ware.

Comment by Denice E. Demuth on April 11, 2011 at 5:40pm

Wow I'm blown away with your spot the moose one and two, I have been working in Talavera style majolica in Cone 1 but the complexity of these pieces in Cone 6 is unbelievable.  Great pieces   Denice

Comment by susan claysmith on April 9, 2011 at 6:16pm

This piece is Cone 6 Plainsman P300 porcelain.  Techniques include Mishima - using a scrafitto tool to carve into the clay which is then filled with a black slip.  When dry it it sanded back so that the slip only remains in the carved lines.  The piece was then bisque fired.  I poured a clear glaze in the interior of the piece.  I then used Mason stains mixed with Bentonite for all of the colouring.  I sprayed a clear glaze over the exterior ands fired to cone 6.  I then decorated with gold lustre and fired to cone 019.