"Fun" With Those F*%&ing Stains

So several years ago while I was developing my "Slate" glaze, I was playing around with some other colours for my matte glaze as well. At the time, I tried a commercial stain called "Blackberry Wine" in my base glaze. I thought it was lovely but not quite what I was looking for at the time.
 

I added a bit of another stain called "Pansy Purple" to push the colour away from burgundy and more towards a dark wine colour. While the colour was exceptional, I lost all of my matte-ness, and shiny was definitely not the look I was after. (The photo doesn't really do the colour any justice, but here it is:)

 As usual, life got in the way and the colour tests got pushed to the back burner. The test tiles went into my huge box with 11 years worth of other test tiles and there it sat collecting dust until recently.

I am still interested in an eggplant coloured matte glaze for my Classic Collection and decided recently to revisit my Blackberry Wine stain. I mixed up a quick sample, based on that very first test as a starting point and was all excited.

Until I opened my kiln.

The colour had all but drained from my glaze and I was left with this rather anemic looking ugly gray. Certainly NOT what I was after.

Now let me explain a wee bit for those not so technically knowledgeable regarding the finer points of glaze chemistry: the stain that I am using to get the original colour uses chrome and tin. These are fickle fiends and require very specific glaze chemistry to pull off their colour magic - no zinc, fire under 1260'C, no magnesium in the glaze and lots of calcium. Check, check, check, and check for the matte glaze that I am currently using.

So what the fuck happened to my colour?!?

An excellent question and one which I have no answer to.

At first I thought maybe I could juggle the calcium in the glaze a bit - perhaps there was TOO MUCH so I bumped it down to the optimal range.

As you can see, the colour got even worse. At least the last time I was getting some speckles of wine colour. This time, nothing but an ugly, flat field of gray.

So I thought I could try adding some other stains to help boost the colour, like that Pansy Purple I tried before:

Or a Deep Crimson:

Better. But not the colour I'm after.

I even tried the Pansy again in a greater concentration:

While it's sorta lovely, there's still too much speckle there for my tastes and the amount of stain required to get this is horrendously high (16%).

So where does that leave me?
I have no flippin' idea.

I am currently at a loss as to why this particular glaze is behaving the way it is, and why it's changing SO FREAKING MUCH from test to test. I'm wondering if there's just too much kaolin in the glaze for the stains to truly come out? Except that I have a stone matte glaze with 5% Blackberry Wine in it and the colour shows up just fine. Or maybe there has been some sort of change to the ingredients that are in the base glaze that I am unaware of? Something coming from a new mine, with slightly different composition? After all, it makes no sense that a glaze that worked fine not three years ago is a complete disaster now. If anyone has any thoughts on this, feel free to post comments. I'm always open to insights.

In the mean time, I'll continue trying to get the colour I'm after. I'm presently trying a new base glaze so we'll see. These things never go as planned, and always seem to take waaaaaaay longer than I'd like. But so it is (sigh).

NYIGF vs. BMAC: Comparing the Shows

Feltware Cups.  Photo copyright Blackbird Photography

Last year, I tried the New York International Gift Fair in January and again in August. This year, I decided to try the Buyer's Market of American Craft. My reasons were twofold: most of my buyers from the NYIGF also went to the BMAC, and the BMAC is significantly cheaper. So how do the shows compare? Here's my thoughts:

- BMAC is less expensive. Significantly. my booth in NY was $4000. in Philly, $2250. But I did notice that the costs for everything else was comparable. Electrical fees in Philly were higher, and I got slammed with a "material handling fee" of  $350 for choosing someone other than the official show carrier to deliver my crate to the show. That sucked. I also had to have floor covering in my booth which was unnecessary in NY. This wasn't something that I had in my crate, which had been stored in New Jersey since the August NYIGF, and I didn't feel like dragging a carpet across the border with me so I had to rent one for the show. It was way overpriced and they didn't even install it properly so buyers were tripping in my booth.

- BMAC is ONLY handmade. Which is awesome. This means the buyers that show up know all about handmade, know that it's pricier, know that we can't crank out 10000 widgets in 4 days. I didn't have to deal with complaints about pricing which is a huge bonus. It gets tiresome defending my right to make a living wage.

- NYIGF is MUCH larger, because there's so much more at the show. There's suppliers and products and designers from all over the world. The show is MASSIVE. which means there's more buyers there. But that's not to say they are all there for the handmade. The handmade section is actually much smaller than what's available at the BMAC.

- I didn't see as many of the big buyers at the BMAC. If you're goal is to get picked up by Anthropologie or somewhere like that, your chances would probably be better at NYIGF. And I didn't see as much of the media in Philly that I saw in NY. There was no House and Home, no Martha Stewart Living, no Country Living. So if you're looking to hook up with media, NY would be a better option. And none if this is to say that these people weren't at BMAC, but I didn't see them, so maybe they just didn't stop by my booth (which is entirely possible).

- Both shows are very well organized and staff communicate regularly and easily with vendors. I had no problems with set up or tear down, or getting questions answered before, during or after either show. Now I have my entire booth packed into a 3x3x5' crate which gets delivered right to my booth, becomes part of my display and gets picked up there after the show, so I don't have to deal with move-in, move-out or waiting for my crate to be delivered to me at the end of the show.

So down to the nitty gritty, how did the shows compare?

- I picked up as many buyers in Philadelphia as I did at BOTH NY shows, as well as re-orders from buyers I met in NY. BUT, the orders were smaller.

- I had a lot more follow up to deal with after NY, buyers who left their cards but weren't interested in placing orders at the show. This tripled my sales from what I wrote on the show floor and I got orders as a direct result of the NY show right into January of this year.

So what are my plans moving forward?

- I haven't decided if I will do NYIGF in August again or not. I guess I need to get on that and make a decision.

- originally I was hoping to do both the BMAC AND the NYIGF next winter but I heard some nasty rumors about the superbowl being in NY the same weekend as the gift fair. This does not bode well for hotel rooms and I have a hard time believing buyers will come to the show when hotel room prices are hugely inflated. I'll look into this further so see what's going on, but if it is the case, count me out.

- I'll definitely be back to BMAC. It was a great show: more affordable, fun to do, wonderful buyers, amazing vendors. BUT, due to the auto show booking the convention center the same weekend that the buyer's market is usually there, they had to move the show dates for next year. Waaaaaaaay up - to mid January, which is early for buyers. It means weather is more unpredictable, it's the same weekend as another wholesale show (Orlando) and the week before NY. We'll see how this plays out. It's entirely possible that it will have a negative effect on the BMAC next year but only time will tell.

So if you've been thinking about either show, there's my 2 cents. I had two bodies of work with me at the show, my Classic Collection, and my Feltware line. So have a peek and see how it may compare to what you'd like to take to the show. If you were at either show, feel free to share your thoughts!