Glaze test tile making has begun!
With the slab roller assembled and our first of three worktables ready (other two still under construction and awaiting their canvas covers), we are finally ready to start making our glaze test tiles!
For those of you who don’t know your way around a pottery studio just yet, test tiles are an important tool for helping to decide the final look of your finished pieces. You can't do this just by looking at the glazes in their containers, because the color a glaze is before firing is generally completely different from the color it will be after exposure to temperatures over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit in the kiln.
Kiln magic at work!
Well, it’s actually science, not magic, and it’s really cool!
Same mugs!
Notice how what looks like an orangish-brown glaze is actually a cream color after firing, and the one that looked beige when first applied later turned a deep blue.
This is where test tiles come in. Using the same clays we’ll be using with our glazes, we’re creating tiles to test not only each glaze, but how the all of the glazes will look when paired. When all of the tiles are finished, we’ll hang them in grids over our glazing station, so that all of you can see which combinations are just right for your very own creations.
Our first batch of 20
These tiles are freshly cut from a leather-hard slab of clay and imprinted with texture, so that you’ll be able to see how each glaze and glaze combination looks on either a smooth or a textured surface.
If left unglazed, this particular clay will look pure white once fired.
Once we finish with this white clay, we’ll move on to making tiles to test glazes on our speckled brown clay.
To create tests for each glaze and combination of glazes we want to make available for use, we need to make about 125 tiles for each of our two colors of clay.
At this point, we’ve got over 200 left to make, but, as you can see, we are having a grand old time playing at the Clayground with all of our new toys!
Clayground’s owner and founder, Cary, and studio manager, Jennifer, hard at play!
Now that we’re really ramping up to launch, we’ll have more news for you very soon, about first classes, our Open House date and more!
Keep watching this space!
