This little TC mug

 

This mug has some history, it's 12, maybe 13 years old. I just glazed it a couple of days ago. I've been carrying it around for a long time, waiting for the right glaze for it. I think I made the right decision. I got it from an art center I used to help run called The Creative Oasis in State College PA. 

It was made by Tony Clennell as a demonstration piece. It sat on our museum shelf with pieces from Seth Cardew, Mel Jacobson, Ian Stainton, Jack Troy, retired PSU instructor David DonTigney as well as pieces from our own instructors. Unfortunately we had to close the Oasis so I gathered the biscware and hauled it around for years. After unpacking the studio when we moved to Tionesta PA, I put the pieces on the shelf absolutely determined to finish them so they would have a useful life.

So I knew Tony was a woodfire potter and this little guy should have ash on it, the trouble is it's cone 6 clay, no one woodfires at cone 6.

So recently I feel like I've been having a mid-career crisis. After doing production work for years, some of the shine was wearing off the 70 hour work weeks. I wanted a return to my roots. Cone 10, gas, wood and salt. Ash glaze. But that doesn't fit in with our business right now so the next best thing is changing everything that can be changed without building a new kiln and disappointing our customers who have come to love everything we're doing now. I needed to have a frivolous relationship..a fling with something new, so, as you do, I hit the internet and searched for my glaze-lover. I searched and searched and made some advances..tested the possibilities. Then I found it.

 For years I have wanted a fake ash glaze at cone 6, so I look and I test and I look and I test and fail and fail and fail.

 This time something happened. I risked a very precious piece on a hunch and after adding a very thin application and a double dip on the rim, this beauty showed up in the kiln. Perfect. I've been drinking tea from it since I pulled it out. It's amazing to me that this much variation came from just one glaze. Anyone who does cone 6 knows that the layers make the magic. This is one glaze and it fits like skin, not a glass over clay.

I'll be mixing up more of this glaze and perhaps doing a delicate blue version too, but I love the glaze as is, just for me. 

I believe this may be a glaze from John Britt but it has not been confirmed.

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 Golden Fake Ash cone 6

28.0 Redart
24.5 Dolomite
21.0 Ball Clay
10.0 Gerstley Borate
9.5 Strontium Carbonate
5.0 Bone Ash
2.0 Lithium Carbonate