I was so amazed by the fireworks in Sydney on NYE!!! It reminded me of the effect of color on our senses and emotions.
This link explains how color affects us.
Achieving amazing results in glazes on ceramics is my quest. Wishing you all the best and great success in all your endeavours this new year!
Greg Daly is the master of lustres on ceramics and his new book is now available!!! Very exciting!!! Greg Daly’s New Book on Lustres!!! His workshop on Lustres in Coffs Harbour was amazing and I’ll post more on that later. For now, get the book!! Yeah! Can’t wait to get mine! I checked Amazon in the USA and it is listed but not available quite yet-keep checking!
I suppose my move to Australia from the USA introduced me to colour – vibrant colour, not subtle in any way, In Australia, the flowers, trees, birds, houses, beaches, fish, and people tend to be more colourful.
This bombardment of colour seems to have produced in me a desire to create those colours in the glazes on my pottery.
I’ve always loved blues (OMG!!!) but I when I first saw a book on the glazes and work produced by Greg Daly, reknown Australian potter, I was gobsmacked (Australian for flabbergasted!). I had never seen colour used so beautifully, intricately or interestingly. It was vivid colour as well! Not the typical “pottery” colours that so many of us are used to. So I was motivated to learn how to do this myself.
Fortunately, the Coffs Harbour TAFE and the Coastal Claymakers were hosting a workshop by Greg Daly and I purchased a spot. Greg’s workshop was fantastic! He is such a generous, knowledgable, inspiring potter/teacher/man.
Greg Daly showed how to mix glazes (as described in his book) so that you can test line blends and then see the results and develop new glazes.
These test tiles show a few of the colours achieved by using this line blend technique. Although I would love to merely have a great, reliable glaze recipe for a particular colour, the process of developing the glazes is very educative and interesting.
Applying glaze to pottery is an art in itself and Greg Daly was great to show us how he layers, waxes and applies various glazes to a piece. For example, this bowl had five glazes, waxing, dipped glaze and painted glaze.
I’ve only begun to dip my toe into the crazy world of colourful ceramic glazes, but I’m having a bit of luck and can’t wait to see what I can come up with! This bowl was in the third firing of my fibre-lined gas kiln cone 10 reduction. The base glaze is Royal Blue. The bowl was then waxed in a criss-cross pattern with Greg Daly’s formula of mixing baby oil and turpentine with wax so that it flows better and “paints” on. However, it is very important to wear a protective gas mask while using this type of wax. The piece was then sprayed with Cone 6 Copper Red from the book, Oriental Glazes by Bailey.
“The wheel was invented by the ancient Sumerians. They lived in the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers in the Middle East. Much, much later this land became part of the country we call Iraq. The Sumerians were the first people to develop a written language. Extensive studies of their writings have led archaeologists and historians to also credit them with the invention of the wheel.
“Potter” Image courtesy of dan/FreeDigitalPhotos.net
The concept of the wheel actually grew out of a mechanical device that the Sumerians had invented shortly after 3500 B.C.—the potter’s wheel. No other civilization of their time had one. This was a heavy flat disk made of hardened clay. It was spun horizontally on an axis to allow the potter to form evenly shaped jars and bowls from wet clay. The Sumerians didn’t, however, simply turn this clay-splattered wheel on its end and hook it to a wagon to make a wheel. Instead, the concept of the wheel went through many stages of development before it became a practical method for moving heavy objects from one location to another.” Source
