From small acorns mighty oaks grow...

Week 10

In this blog I'm making a small bowl.  

Given the sea find appearance of the larger bowl I thought it would be good to continue the archaeological them with this bowl and am aiming for a slightly distressed and earthen look.

Since this is a small bowl I am making it as a single thread form intending to be a young baby with its own life ahead of it.  I also want to show that its life is full so I will fill the cup with the Norse water of life - Akevitt (glass really and not to be confused with the alcoholic beverage...).

I start the process by using the wax maquette I made at the start of my developments.  I will use this to cast my mould.  Unfortunately, this is the lost wax method which means I will have to get the bowl out of the plaster mould by melting it.  I won't go into too much detail on the plaster mould making as I have covered this extensively in my earlier blogs.

  

 

I like the detail in the finished mould particularly the reappearance of the little fine threads from the twine used to create the original maquette.  It is asking a lot but it would be fantastic if one or two of them survived the firing.

I am also making this bowl using Pate de Verre and the same mix of Bullseye medium amber and steel blue.  In this instance I am making the outer shell of the bowl with the medium amber glass and then filling it with steel blue water.

I'm making the amber paste mildy moist so that it binds well to the texture and results in a more open and granulated finish.  The blue paste will be quite wet and should result in more shrinkage but a smoother finish; the shrinkage should pull the water away from the bowl. 

An overnight firing in the small Paragon kiln at 730' should suffice.

 Initial impressions are good.  The blue looks quite dark but this should pale as the piece loses some heat.  You can see ho much sjrinkage has occurred with the water and that it gives a sense of separation from the bowls sides.

 Divesting the bowl can be nerve wracking with Pate De Verre especially when you have tried for a granular effect as this is inherently brittle.  You can see in the image below the very delicate extensions above the rim of the bowl.

To clean the bowl I let it sit in water over night and gave it a firm brush on the main lower bowl section, but used delicate brush strokes on the delicate upper section.  I then used hydrofluoric acid toe remove all other plaster traces from the textured glass.

I think it has picked up the texture of the twine really well although all of the fine threads were lost in the firing.

I really do like get in close and appreciating the fine details of Pate de Verre.