Well the piece dried slowly, for weeks and every few days I smoothed some of the edges and worked on forming handles. It was all taking shape well. Just as it was almost finished drying the corners of the tray started to crack. I filled the corners in and smoothed it over. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Clay has memory, and it usually remembers what you don’t want it to. As I put it in the kiln for the first fire, I knew there was a good chance the corners would continue to crack.
Amazingly it came out fine. I applied the glazes, two different colors applied in layers. Instead of laying it flat on the shelf, I laid down a thin layer of grog so as the tray shrunk and moved in the firing, it would slide easily along. The next morning as I opened the kiln, I saw the corners cracked. It looks like I’ll be adding a kintsugi finish. Which means using liquid gold (or something like that) to repair a broken pot. Here is a photo of glazed and unglazed areas of the tray as a comparison.
Knowing this was probably going to be an issue I had already started another tray. Learning from my earlier issues. This one was made thicker and tried to do very little adjusting to it after I formed it. I also used a combination of clays to get some added depth when it is glazed.
I am very excited about where this one is going. I’ll post the final pictures of this as well as the Kintsugi repair on the first tray when they are completed.
