kiln unloading; wire & paper

I did a biscuit and glaze firing over the last couple of days, firing the first few bits of my course related pieces. Being a bit experimental, some have come off well and others not worked. But I am excited by the process and it is throwing up new ideas.

1. wire

 

The basic wire sgrafito looks ok but a bit basic. The more abstract, contour based sgrafito however looks good and is an idea which could be taken further. I think a set with turquoise inner and this decoration outside would look great.

2. paper-cut

Less successful. The painted on cobolt solution looks scruffy and the sponged on slip is ok but too dark and the shapes too large for the pot. The dark colour against a white background is too stark for me too.

I do have ideas to take this forward though and am sketching more designs from a Portuguese tile source book. Rather than decorating the whole pot I am looking at doing a narrow vertical band, maybe two shapes wide, but with much smaller shapes than above. And maybe sponging a background colour to give texture and match the patterns tone more rather than stark white.