Image Transfer on Clay

I started teaching out of my studio and have been having so much fun.  My dear friend, teacher and now student, Anne Warren is taking class and keeping me on my toes.  Anne is a wonderful fiber artist herself and is so self motivated.  One project we have been working on is image transfer on clay.  We are using the book, Image Transfer on Clay by Paul Andrew Wandless, as our guide to explore image transfer.  The image above is a tile I glazed and an image Anne, who also has a medical background, chose to transfer onto the clay tile.   

Concept to Creation

Theresa Yondo

Serving Trays with Bowl

Above two nesting rectangular trays with a small thrown bowl.

Cone 10 electric fired, porcelain.

I have been working all winter on new glazes and designs and I am beginning to see results from all the work.    The bottom tray is a new size I am making and will fit a standard loaf of bread.  The top rectangular tray is perfect for sushi, asparagus or other snack foods such as cheese and crackers.  The bowl is perfect for a dipping sauce or nuts.

Concept to Creation

Theresa Yondo

More Ash Glaze Results

Finally, I timidly glazed the top fourth of this vase with ash glaze as I hate to clean kiln shelves and did not want a melt down with this new glaze.  Trying to find a speckled brown glaze that I can live with at cone 10 electric has been nearly impossible.  It is not like you can mix paint and come up with the color you want on a canvas.  This brown glaze is an ash glaze and has Barnard Clay in the glaze.  Luckily, I have about 200 pounds of Barnard Clay that is about 25 years old.  I guess it does pay to collect materials you think you may some day use.  Although this glaze is made mostly from Wood Ash which can be unpredictable and Barnard Clay (Blackbird) which can be hard to come by, I hope to reproduce something close to this glaze when I make up a big batch.

Concept to Creation

Theresa Yondo

Ash Glaze in Electric Kiln

Here are some of the test results from the ash glazes.  I used the same base glaze on nine of the tests and overlapped the ash glaze on top.  Some of the results are pretty yummy.  Originally, I learned to fire my work in a cone 10 reduction gas kiln.  When I finally got my own studio together I just did not have the money or the physical energy to build a reduction fired kiln so I went electric.  I now fire cone 10 electric.  Wow, one the most difficult things I had to let go of was the flame.  The flame whipping around in the fire chamber of a kiln is so much of the magic that caused me to become a ceramic artist.  Centering the clay and working with the flame became my muse. 
In graduate school in 1995 at KSU, Kirk Mangus gave me six pages of notes from his time at Chester Springs Studio in 1991.  Most of the glaze recipes I tested this round came from his notes.

Concept to Creation
Theresa Yondo