Glazed Over…

Regular visitors may recall this post on my collection of old boiler plates. I had made moulds from them around that time, but a number of changes to our workshops meant that they were put aside until normal service was resumed. I did actually cast a couple in white stoneware slip and these were bisque fired, but I forgot about them until they were handed to me recently!

Well, faced with some unglazed ceramic typography, the only decent thing to do was to glaze them.  This one was dipped in College Blue glaze and then wiped to allow the raised letting to become ‘reversed’ from the background colour.

This one was not cast so well but I liked the distressed feel so much I splashed over some Tenmoku and wiped off with my hand whilst it was drying. This has created a gooey, grease-like quality to the glaze, especially where it has been left thicker between the lettering…

Ceramic/Asemic

I have been experimenting with glazes and oxides recently. I rolled some tiles in krank clay just explore some finishes…

These are simply white glaze with black oxide brushed on over the top.

There is a lovely effect that can be seen on the image above, where the oxide has been drawn from the brush and created some areas of saturation at the top, and then a real textural effect as the oxides ‘thin out’ towards the end of the stroke.

I was also testing some imprints too. Inspired by the chinese tradition of the ‘chop’  I decided to see if I could achieve a similar effect with a bit of  typography…

These were all from an incomplete set of Cooper Black – an ampersand and a Pilcrow!

Special K!

Now that Frankenstem has been bisque fired, it is time to thinke about the finish. I decided to go with a Raku firing for this – smoke firing that turns the unglazed ceramic black, and in this case, will give a very contrasty crackle to the glazed parts.

I coated each white panel with the special glaze – this will give me strong contrasting shapes in black and white.

I then decided to throw a pot. I have never done this before, nor really ever wanted to, but the mood took me and I was given a crash course. This is my very first attempt:

My second throw was even better and I managed to sculpt some shape into the base:

I’ll keep you informed of their progress…

Several days have now passed, and Frankenstem has been subjected to some harsh smoke firing (Raku) and has been cleaned up for a formal viewing:

Raku firing is prone to disaster, and it is often the case that pieces can crack in the process. This was no exeption – it broke at the weakest part, but if it was going to go, it would have been there…

Nothing that a bit of superglue won’t fix!

The real appeal of Raku is in the quality of the glazing. It  creates layers of clear crackles and underlying black ones where the smoke has penetrated. I ended up photographing lots of this type of thing:

(click on the image for more detail)

But after a while I got to thinking about the visual similarity between the detail in the Raku glaze and its map-like qualities…

The Fall And Rise of the Ceramic Letterforms

Oh yes, it’s about time I got back into this. I rolled out a couple of 20mm thick slabs of krank (gritty) clay the day before to allow them a bit of time to cure and become handlable, before tracing out and cutting two lower case ‘k’s’ and a batch of strips about 50mm wide.

I had decided to make this letterform in the same way as I had the previous ones, but be more experimental with the finishing and glazing. The first stage is to score all of the edges where the strips and the letters meet and then liberally coat with slip – a more liquified version of the same clay.

Each strip is positioned and trimmed to size, removing any excess slip and smoothing out the joins.

This process continues until the ‘walls’ are raised and then the ‘lid’ goes on in the sam way. Sorry for the quality of some of these images but I was using the workshop camera which is a bit knocked about now.

As I was smoothing the joins and straightening the edges I added some black slip – a more decorative version of the slip used to stick everything together – and merged it in with a serrated kidney and various other tools.

At the last point I decided to add a little tension and trim off the part of the stem so that the letterform would be able to sit back on it’s haunches.

I knew that I was being optimistic with the stress on the very thin join, but had hoped that if I was careful… But alas, no. The whole letterform was just too fragile to move, let alone finish, so another direction had to be taken. Before the structure could break and damage either side I carefully cut the stem off:

leaving this typographic ‘relic’ behind. I’ll take this a little further.

But what of the stem? Well I just couldn’t stop myself slicing once I’d started…

And then a mood of remorse descended and I began to rebuild it…

To become FRANKENSTEM  (pause for laughter.)

I coated some of the sides with white slip as I tidied this up, making sure to get some of the edges and corners to stay sharp.

At this point, the clay and slip is still a little too wet so I’ll leave it to dry more overnight and finish off any last details when it is a little firmer.

Return Of The 3D Letterforms

It’s been a long time coming, but my ceramic ligature has finally been fired! I’m not going to go into why it’s taken so long as I am SO pleased with it now that I have it back! I posted an entry about these (there are three of them) not long after making them last June with a description of what I intended to do with the glazing.

My original description of the black oxide finish was of ‘old blackened cast iron’ but these close-ups suggest  something more akin to asphalt.

They were constructed from slabs of krank clay and assembled in a similar way to the ampersand that I made in May. (More of which later)

Ok, so how big is it? The image above shows it alongside a standard memory stick for a visual scale, but it measures 405mm between its extremities, 40mm across the main stroke of the ‘f’, and 55mm deep. It is hollow inside and has a carefully placed hole on the back to vent the hot air from inside whilst firing. It will also be a handy hanging point too.

So we’re under more snow and a perfect opportunity to get a few shots! No reason for this, except that I might as well make use of a nice clean white backdrop!

I mentioned the ampersand earlier and remembered that I hadn’t posted any images of it since it was glazed and fired. It’s been sat on my dining room table since July last year and become a regular visual of my daily life, sitting silently alongside me as I have my breakfast. Here it is then.

Mmm. Nice. Put the kettle on.

Boiler Plates

I’ve had a load of old boiler plates knocking around for years, courtesy of my father-in-law (who has known to have kept a stick in the corner of his garage for up to 20 years -’just in case!’) and the most interesting of them are fastened to a scruffy bit of wall in my garden. In July, I decided to make some moulds from a few of them, with a view to making some book covers or something. I did all the usual  processes to make the moulds – most of which I have already covered here. Here are the four original metal plates:

As I wasn’t sure what to do with any casts made from the moulds, I decided to have a little experiment. Using the last of a batch of terracotta cast – a sort of plaster and iron powder mix – I cast one of each. When they were set, I gave them a quick scrub to bring up the surface, and soaked them in water overnight to set the rusting process off. The results can be found on my Flickr site showing how they looked soon after creation.

The experiment began when I took them home. I did absolutely nothing to them. Just put them outside in the garden and left them to the elements. Of course, the British summer being what it is, they continued to rust and deteriorate. Beautiful colours and textures began to bloom, and the material took on another form:

This last one became very fragile and contained a lot of iron – it must have been the last one cast and got all the sedimentary gunk out of the pot. After a couple of weeks outside, it begun to curl as the iron rusted and expanded. Eventually it shattered, but still make for interesting viewing as it reveals how the iron powder settles to the bottom in the mould and forms a thick crust:

Mmm. Nice. Anyway here are some more photographs – click on them to see larger versions. Enjoy!

This one has some of the paint that was on the original, that was transferred to the mould.

New Books

Regular visitors to this blog may remember some ceramic book covers I made. Well I have worked on them a little further and made some new ones.

As I mentioned in the first post on this, I intended to make my own paper. I used a commercial/craft paper pulp mixed with water for this, no magic tricks or alchemy, and what I have is 9 sheets of reasonably white, soft paper, around A4 size with a deckle edge.

They vary in weight, from quite thick to very thin (so thin they are easily torn) and I also made about the same amount with added material, namely shredded and torn pages from the original book, Margarets Choice:

A very satisfying process, with lots of potential for adding unusual substances to the mix, for extra texture, colour and stability. Of course, I could just go and buy some lovely stuff from my local craft store, but where’s the fun in that, eh?

…

For this next book I made a mould of a piece of old steel cut from a boat and made two terracotta cast peices, drilled them before they hardened fully and set them to soak for a couple of days. I used this stuff to cast one of the Helvetica ‘a’s a while back. It’s a kind of reddish plaster mixed with iron powder, so when you’ve had it in some water for a while and then expose it to the air, it rusts! As I couldn’t use the original peice of steel (it was to be made into a sculpture by Ben) I thought this was a good alternative.

The terracotta cast is very heavy owing to the iron content, which is a nice counterpoint to the choice of binding. I decided to use coptic binding for this, as well as commercial cartridge paper for the book stock.  I like the idea of the delicate, exposed threads holding the rough and heavy covers around the clean, regular pages. The book measures approximately 210mmm x 95mm.

Further Adventures in Letterforming

Over the past month or so, during lunchtimes and after work, I have been beavering away in the workshop, continuing exploring letterforms in clay. The roman ‘g’  pictured above is the first in what I hope will become a series, of sunken or embedded letterforms. I’m working at a scale of around 35cm length here, but you get little sense of that here. I’ll take the next batch of images in recogniseable spaces to show the scale. This one will be reduction fired to bring out the brown grit of the krank clay, and emphasize the white slip erm… ‘guano’. It is designed to sit on a reflective surface for a retro ‘Vision On’ effect! 

This majestic Playbill X was an exercise in creating an angled 3D form, tapering from around 55mm at the base to 10mm at the top. It’s just bisque fired at the moment, ready for a glaze finish, but I’m not sure of which way to go yet. I’m thinking about a glossy blue glaze that will give the surface a smoother finish in places, whilst allowing the grittiness of the clay to come through on the edges. X marks the spot.

Mmm. Nice. Another unfinished one, this time an elegant ligature ‘fi’. I guess I’m a little impatient and excitable about these, posting them unfinished, with no process shown etc, but I thought you’d enjoy them at this stage too. This one I’ve given a coating of black oxide today, which when fired will give this a look of old blackened cast iron. Again, you cant see the scale here, but if you consider the crossbar to be around 15mm you’ll get the picture.

I’ve got some other stuff in progress too, but feel that I’ve neglected my bookbinding for too long, so I will finish these off over the summer and maybe start something new in a couple of months.

Ceramic Book Covers

A few weeks ago I bought a few old hardback books from junk shops and car boot sales that were embossed or foil blocked. The books themselves were generally knackered, so I had few qualms about removing the covers ( the text pages will be used for something else…) From these I made rubber moulds, with limited success, as the heat from the rubber warped the covers, or destroyed them completely, separating the buckram cloth from the boards. I did manage to get two reasonable moulds though (note to self; use plaster next time) into which I filled with slip (liquid clay) and left to dry. I left them a little too long though, and they curled as they dried but this has added another interesting dimensional element.

To create this first one I brushed on an oxide (some leftover mix left out – I don’t know exactly what oxide this is) and then wiped it off with a damp sponge leaving the oxide in the embossed areas. Then they were given a dip in a clear glaze and refired.

The binding technique is called Belgian Secret Binding, and the pages are attached to the cover through the loops on the inner spine. I am going to attach some handmade paper with deckled edges to this in a week or so, but I was so pleased with this I thought I’d share it with you now. The beauty in these is in the surface texture and finish, so here are some close-ups.

The next covers are coated with iron oxide and wiped of as before, but not glazed. They are also thinner and have warped much more, however, when they are put together as a book they close up a little like a clamshell, so I will make maller, thicker pages for this one and the cover will enclose them.

And more close ups.

I will post images in the Projects section when they are complete…

Today I made a few sample covers using slabs of krank clay and have begun exploring coloured slips for decoration. I may feature them at another time if there is any demand.