Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: classes, process, textures

After doing the crackle “trick” demo on a slab, I showed them how the same process works even better on wheelthrown pieces. So for this one I threw a basic cylinder and painted the outside with the “white slip sodium silicate mixture.” I put on a couple layers and then dried it a bit with a heat gun. Just for fun, we had also drawn some lines into the slip before expanding just out of curiosity. I mean, if we’re playing & testing, we might as well get as much “information” back from it as possible, right?

Then I pressed outwards to add volume to the cylinder with the wheel spinning… never touching the exterior with my hands… and the crackles just magically appear. The more you expand it, the bigger the crackles! So again, they were all duly impressed… and I must admit, I was pretty intrigued too!

After that first “pattern sampler” demo vase, I made a second one with the same “white slip sodium silicate mixture” but with little swipes through the slip all the way around. Again, I dried the “skin” of the slip quickly with a heat gun and then expanded it for the crackle to appear. I like this one even more… we might be onto something here… we’ll see…

And who knows… next session at Lillstreet I’ll be teaching a new “Surface Decoration” class on Thursday evenings. Pretty good chance this little trick might show up again then!!!

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