Sodium Silicate

Loving how this sodium silicate technique creates such interesting, organic, textural patterns in the clay.  These pieces are on brown clay.   Can't wait to see how the others turn out!

I've been using a brown clay with manganese flecks (Standard 112):

Different sizes in the crackles:

This one I did in Deep Firebrick - Amaco glaze - which is very pretty, but it's a bit more opaque than I would have liked because you can't see the manganese flecks.  I'll try a different red next time.



Different shape - smaller crackle texture - probably because either not enough sodium silicate and/or didn't stretch it enough:

And here is the finished piece - the same turquoise as the first piece - just LOVE how the manganese flecks show through this glaze:

Unfortunately, we had an accident moving the pieces upstairs from the kiln room - bummer but that's pottery: (   The good news is that I can inspect my walls, which are not perfect - could be a bit thinner and a bit more even, but are not bad.  The inside of the pot is just glazed with clear, so it's the natural, warm brown of the clay and the manganese flecks.

This one started life as a tall cylinder - about 8" (tall for me). I incised the vertical lines and then painted the sodium silicate over the vertical lines.  So the texture is a combination of deep vertical lines and the crackle of the sodium silicate after the clay was stretched.  I am just getting the hang of stretching the clay in such an extreme way, so there are very thin spots on the wall.  This was also a big pot for me, and I almost lost it - had to hang it upside down for a couple of days to try to salvage it!  The organic looking rim was a way to finish the piece - with so many thin spots on this piece, I was afraid if I did much to it, it would crack - actually it did crack and I had to patch it up.  So, I didn't want to try to do much more to the rim because the walls were so fragile.  I finished the piece so you could still see the vertical texture of the neck, which is a nice contrast to the diagonal direction of the lines on the rest of the pot -and I kept the rim really thick to help balance out the rest of the piece, but left it organic to match the base of the pot.

So happy with how this guy ended up - I almost threw him away too!  The inside and rim are glazed with creme matt and the outside has black, which was rubbed off.  The neck has a little of the turquoise under the creme matt, but that didn't work so well.