Often, people who don't do ceramics or are not familiar with the process, wonder why in the world it would take so long to make a handprint plaque. There are at least one thousand things that could and do go wrong in the process, and most people would not want to show you the horror stories, for fear you would think less of their expertise, but I am showing this to show that even with 16 years of experience, bad things happen without any fault of the artist. Ceramics is a complex and mysterious craft where pretty much anything can and will go wrong even under the best circumstances. I'll be posting a detailed description of these common "faults" and why they happen and what to do to alleviate them in my members-only blog you can subscribe to for handprint artists and beginning ceramists.
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| this is what happens when you rush it-notice that the plaque right next to it is perfectly fine and was made EXACTLY the same way at the same time, with the same materials, fired in the same kiln. |
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| that's gonna leave a mark-this was so sad, look at the beautiful color of the glaze |
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| The plaque was totally fine when I unloaded it from the kiln. It started with one tiny crack when I was packing it, then a spot, and pretty soon the whole thing popped off within the week. |
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| so I tried it again with a new glaze |
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| the postman broke this three times, so I redid it three times. I ended up actually fixing this and it looked great, you couldn't even tell, but it was a bit of work. |
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| I tried to drill it down and repaint, reglaze and refire, and it kept doing this-bad batch of clay that I didn't know about. |
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| this was supposed to be purple and got all kinds of kiln crud on it-I made master molds and redid the whole plaque without having the mom come back in |
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| this one is fine but the mom gave me the wrong time; it was supposed to be 11:35pm so I had to redo this again for her, after two other attempts to match a glaze on her first daughter's plaque that was discontinued. |
glaze not filling in the lettering-need to reglaze and refire
glaze pulling-need to repaint, reglaze, and refire
12 " tile one broken of an 8 part mural
tile 2 broken
tile 3 broken
yet this one was fine-I had to repaint, reglaze and refire all 4 tiles again
16" plaque broke in half after it cracked out of the kiln
contaminants in the glaze-had to drill off, and reglaze and refire each tiny spot
glaze pulling-had to drill off and repaint and refire
glaze peeling/popping off-this whole item had to be remade completely as the glaze didn't start popping off until a week after it was unloaded from the kiln.
It's really enough to make you scream and pull your hair out. But seasoned ceramists know this is part and parcel of the entire process-completely normal and just part of a day's (or month's) work. Ceramists make great Buddhists because we have to practice non-attachment everyday we work and have these suprises when we open a kiln. But it makes it all more sweet when one, two , or more items not only survive 2000F for 12 or more hours, but maybe even are even more beautiful than we imagined or expected.
