Rainbow Iridescent OilSpot Glazes

Hello Again! It’s been quite some time since my last post. Gotta thank those of you who have contacted me with interest and suggestions! With so many summer projects and school stuff, it’s been very difficult to put my full efforts into any one thing… but life is what happens while you’re making plans.  Anyways, enough with the excuses.

Over the summer I had the time and energy to figure out an acceptable firing schedule in our new Blaauw kilns.  For as much as I love their sleek and sexy design, computer controllers, and top of the line hardware… you can’t look in the damn things while they’re firing. This poses several challenges for control freak oil spotters. Usually, the idea is to firein complete and total oxidation, going slowly through cone 7,8,and 9 to allow thermally reducing iron to bubble up through the glaze and cause the surface to crater or foam. By carefully monitoring the situation inside the kiln, and by pulling out glazed pull rings, the firer can increase the temperature slowly and fire until the glazes have significantly ‘healed over’. This isn’t really an option, so as a result a much more empirical approach was needed to find a good fit.

After 5 firings, I settled on a more or less acceptable firing schedule (the way this programming works is that the kiln starts at 0, take 1:30 to get to 200C, then 2:30 to get to 700C, etc). In Celcius;

time_temp 00:00 5

time_temp 01:30 200

time_temp 02:30 700

time_temp 03:00 1115

time_temp 02:00 1190

time_temp 02:30 1230

time_temp 02:30 1253

cooling

time_temp 02:00 1000

time_temp 02:00 500

time_temp 02:00 300

time_temp 02:00 50

time_temp 04:00 50

 

Once that was established, I began with some of my favorite tiles from my initial 2 rounds of oilspot base glaze recipes. My favorites:

 

NoCo OS:  (NC)

Dolomite 4.4

Whiting 4.4

K200 Feldspar 57.3

EPK 9.7

200m Silica 24.2

Spanish FeOx  10

 

Candace Black:  (CB)

Dolomite          5

Whiting           5

K200 Feldspar 60

EPK                       5

200m Silica  20

Spanish FeOx  8

Cobalt Carb       5

 

Loganspot: (LS)

Local Black Dolomite 10

K200        65

EPK          5

Silica     20

Cobalt      5

Red Iron  8

 

Fake Mashiko: (FM)

K200  37.6

Silica  9

Redart  8

Calcined Redart 35

Wollastonite   5.7

Talc    4.3

Bone Ash  .5

Red Iron   4

 

With these base glazes I began mixing, blending, and layering, and combining glazes with dipped, poured, and sprayed application.  On a whim I decided to experiment with some of my manganese saturate glazes, and that’s when things started to get really interesting. There is admittedly one glaze in particular that I’m not sharing, but with a little diligence and some wet blending, a seriously motivated glaze experimenter can discover this glaze by  looking at my old posting on my OSII series. Blend them all in 50/50 proportions and you’ll get the elusive but beautiful  GF glaze. Hell, it might even be on my blog somewhere. That’s all I’m saying for now – I’d hate to rob anyone of the learning experience… Hah! =)

 

Recently I was contacted by the British potter Allen Richards who has done some pretty extensive research into lustrous gold glazes. He suggested that I try small additions of Vanadium Pentoxide. These glazes feature 2 amended manganese saturate glazes in combinations with the usual oilspot suspects.

 

 

 

 

Here are some videos of some of my latest results. None of these particular tiles have Vanadium pentoxide.  As time goes by I’ll try to annotate the combinations MS corresponds to Manganese Saturate.