What a relief to open the kiln this morning and find that all the work is bright and buttery smooth! I was firing plates painted by Paul Mathieu, Monique Fouquet and Eric Metcalfe as well as my own work and dishes and tiles painted by my niece and great-niece when they were here from Texas. Here are the plates, all made of white earthenware this time. 

Paul plans to complete his boldly painted platters with fine outlines in gold or silver lustre I believe. I’ll ask him to let me have a photo of them when they’re finished – but meanwhile he says he doesn’t mind my posting these.

Eric chose yellow and grey backgrounds for his bold graphics.

And Monique painted circles framed by the white clay for her designs.

It is so interesting to see totally different approaches to the process of painting on bone-dry plates with underglazes. The results can be watery like water-colours or opaque like acrylics.

My little reminder to myself after HOW many years is not to mix up a new batch of glaze and apply it on the same day. Having done that I had to re-fire this whole kiln-load because the first application was too thin! Luckily this second glaze firing turned out really well. I had posted on Facebook about having had a nightmare about all my hot pots being stolen! I WAS anxious.

I’ll post photos of a few of my own pots in the next blog entry.