Forgot to mention, also pulled this one out of the kiln last night:


It’s kind of a hybrid of the Shards and Crystals series, nothing special but I like the colors. I’m using a pair of molds that Mom threw for me on the wheel and bisqued (it pays to have a ceramically talented mother around). The coarse frit (in this case BE Turquoise Blue, Aquamarine Blue, Light Aquamarine Blue and Uroboros Peacock Blue for accent) is packed into the bottom of the outer mold, the inner mold is centered, and additional frit is dropped down the sides in layers.

In this particular case I didn’t get the inner mold centered exactly, so it’s thick on one side and thin on the other. That’s bad news for this technique because it just about ruins the piece. The thin side doesn’t really fuse well and tends to crack and come apart easily while removing. You can see the thin side coming apart here. While that makes a more interesting piece than if it were perfectly symmetrical, it’s also unstable and liable to continue breaking.

And, in fact, it did break off while I was photographing it–I grabbed it by the fragile side to shift it a bit, and craaaaaaaaack….

Technically, it’s a failure, but a good-looking failure. I think the real issue is that the molds are just a tad too close together, probably not quite allowing enough space for the glass to move in and get comfortable. I really love the thin-and-fragile bowls that result, but I’m losing too many of them to make this a viable combination.

One option is to use this mold pair with smaller frit, the medium size, most likely, because there’s a better chance of getting the packing right. It’ll lose that nice crystalline quality, however.

On to the next…