Tough Glazes





Pottery (pot·ter·y): n 1: ceramic ware made from clay and baked in a kiln; the art of, was early practised among all nations
The art of ceramics took place centuries and centuries ago, and today we are still able to appriciate the fine craftmanship of the potter.
That was the method behind the maddness on why I signed up for Ceramics 1 at the begining of this school year. I always thought that it would be cool to have an object that my posterity could have and show off to people saying "This pot was made by my great-great-great-great grandma back in 2005! Isn't that cool? Wasn't she the coolest person ever?!" and so on. (Corny? Yes. Do I care? No). The begining of the class was all fine. I made a stamp, a mug, a jewlery box, and I threw my very first pot on a wheel. The teacher even learned my name which is very surprising becuase those who know me well know that I don't really participate in class discussions or talk to teachers on a daily basis. I just kind of do my thing and walk out with my A. So it seemed like this class was going well. That was until today. I got my first glazed pot back from the fireing. I thought it looked pretty decent. It was a dark purple with dots of black and brown where the glaze weared off and the clay showed through. Well, my teacher brought out a box full of glazed pots. One at a time she took out each of the pots and showed them to the class and critiqued them. Once she got to my pot, she held it up and said, "This is a good example of a bad example on how not to glaze a pot." Then she went on about how we need to pay attention to the demonstrations she gives in class and about how our fireing kiln is broken so we need to make sure that we wipe off the glaze because the teacher from the other school is fireing our pots out of "the goodness of his heart". Then she put it down and excused us to go back into the studio. Let's just say, it was pretty embarassing to pick up my pot and take it home after that. But instead of leaving it there, I decided to take it home becuase I wanted to keep it forever so my grandchildren could show everyone how cool I was.