Snail Scott on wed 11 sep 02
At 11:24 AM 9/11/02 -0700, you wrote:
>Hello, just wondering how you get glaze on the whole piece?
Typically, the entire piece IS glazed by dipping or brushing.
The foot is protected by wax which has been applied before
glazing, though, so the glaze won't stick and stay there.
Alternatively, you can skip the wax and wipe the glaze off
the foot with a sponge. For stoneware, these two methods are
probably the most typical. It's called 'dry-footing'.
For earthenware, it's fairly common instead to leave the
glaze on the whole piece and 'stilt' the piece on specially-
made little tripods with tips made of high-temperature
wire. They leave little marks after firing, but can be
easily sanded smoother. They cost about a buck apiece or
so, depending on the size, and are reusable.
Stilts are less widely used for stoneware in part because
the small areas of support can sometimes lead to warping,
since stoneware is more vitrified than earthenware. Stilt
wires can also bend easily at higher temperatures, especially
if the work is heavy, and leave the clay part of the stilt
permanently glued to the bottom of the piece. Further, dry-
footing has a long tradition behind it, and has simply become
conventional. If the clay body is groggy the foot can feel
rough, but many people sand it smooth, not just for aesthetic
reasons but to avoid scatching the customers' expensive
tabletops.
Either way, you need to keep glazed surfaces off the kiln
shelves, or they might become permanently attached, and at
best, the piece will have a big patch of kilnwash stuck to
it. (And previously-fired glaze is just as sticky to a hot
kiln as it was the first time it was fired.)
-Snail
Matthew Bullis on wed 11 sep 02
Hello, just wondering how you get glaze on the whole piece? I took a
ceramics class in high school, then one in college about three years ago,
and the teacher got the whole piece glazed. So, for the first firing, do you
just glaze everything but the part that's going to be on the shelf, then
fire it again with glaze on the unglazed part? Does this affect the already
glazed part by firing again, or does the glaze kind of get protected or
whatever. Hopefully this explains this properly. I just don't like the feel
of a fired piece that has no glaze on it. Since I'm blind, the feel is
important, and I don't know how it looks to everyone else, but I sure don't
like the rough texture. Either that, or isn't there some method or material
that can be used so you can glaze the whole piece without it sticking to the
shelf? It seems there should be some material.
Thanks a lot.
Matthew
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