Adventures in Damask

So my experiment with the underglaze and my damask stamp was a complete failure. You couldn't see it at all when it was under may slate matte glaze, and when it was on top of the slate matte, it completely disappeared as well.

Incidentally, I had some other glazes kicking around that I thought I'd try with the stamp at the same time. I used some Licorice from the Mastering Cone Six Glazes book, but this was a disaster. Really runny, and left more of a greenish/translucent-ish blur. No detail what-so-ever. 

I also had a test batch Strontium Crystal Magic kicking around and thought what the hell? Strontium Crystal Magic, from what I can gather, is a glaze attributed to Steven Hill, who does the most amazing electric fired work that convincingly looks reduction fired. This is a glaze he uses to get other glazes flowin' and movin'. And if you've been following my posts on my adventures with glaze, you'll probably notice I have a lot of "what the hell, why not?" kinda moments. Ironically, it's in these moments where I find the most interesting results.  Here's some Strontium Crystal Magic stamped onto my slate matte glaze:

So it's a little drippy. But this happened when I was stamping the image onto the pot. I saturated my stamp a little too much and it ran. So other than that what do I think?

Interesting....

But not what I'm after. I was hoping for a black image on my gray glaze. I'm not keen on the lighter Damask on the dark glaze. And the Strontium Crystal Magic seems to fir the image too much. Now don't get me wrong, there's a lot of potential in there. The effect is really quite attractive, if that's what you're going for. But in my case, it's not. I may come back to this at some point, with another idea/design but I don't think I'll pursue it any more with this particular tangent I'm on.

So where to next? I have been doing some reading and came across transmutation glazes. These are glazes that draw colour up from the clay body underneath and incorporate it into the glaze. I'm intrigued by this and have some ideas that may create more of the look that I'm after. So back to the glaze room to mix up some more tests...

And in case you're interested, here's some recipes: (please use common sense when mixing and testing glazes in your own studio).

Licorice:
Ferro Frit 3134: 26
Custer Feldspar: 22
Talc: 5
Whiting: 4
EPK Kaolin: 17
Silica: 26
Red Iron Oxide: 9
Cobalt Carbonate: 2

Strontium Crystal Magic:

Custer feldspar: 46
Whiting :17.2
EPK: 4.9
Strontium Carb: 12.6
Ferro Frit 3134: 14.6
Titanium Dioxide: 13.8

Another Path

 So one of the things I have been studying a lot lately are those amazing damask wallpapers. I have completely fallen in love with them!

 

 
I have been curious about pattern and itching to decorate my new line of work and thought I'd try my hand at damask. I did a bunch of research over the internet, studied patterns, and stumbled across a tutorial on how to design your own damask. The tutorial was for using Photoshop, which I don't have, but gave the gist of things. It broke down the damask patterns into triangles, and once you have your basic shape, its just a matter of filling in the sections. Using this as a starting point, I came up with a simple damask pattern to use with my own work.

Now for the hard part: how to use that pattern. One of the things I like about many of these damask wallpapers is the tone-on-tone colors. So I began thinking about how I could use that approach with my slate matte glaze, and how I could pair that with some decoration in a darker black. This would keep the pattern subtle, and understated.

I thought a good place to start would be with my black underglaze, either under or over my slate matte. Okay. So now how to put it there.

I picked up a little trick from Scott Barnim who uses a hot pin tool to carve his own sponges for decorating his work and thought that not only would this be fun to try, but it would help create some soft lines, so I set out to transfer my damask pattern to a piece of foam that I could use as a stamp.

I  can tell you that burning foam is absolutely, utterly nauseating. A mask is most definitely required. And a WELL ventilated space. LOTS of open windows. And LOTS of air flowing through the room. Anything that smells that disgusting has GOT to be pretty toxic.

So anyways, here's how things went down. First I scanned my damask image into the computer then blew it up to the size I was after. I cut this pattern out with an exacto to make a stencil so I could copy this image to my foam and then I ever-so-patiently heated and re-heated my pin tool and slowly burned away the foam to create my stamp.

  

 

So the stamp works! Now to give it a try over and under some glaze! Stay tuned!