Part tu(lip)

First thing I did, on my return from Wisconsin, was to address the elephant in the studio--no, not the elephant banks, though they were high on the list. I mean the giant tulipière. It came through the bisque fine, back in January, and had been hiding in a box while everything else for the firing got made and dried and bisque fired.

Somewhere along the line, while I was diligently not thinking about it, my subconscious had an idea. Since the customer wanted blue-and-white ware, as Delft-ish as possible, why not glaze it in my electric kiln? While I love the warm tones and iron-spotting my white glaze gives in reduction, I was reasonably sure she wouldn't. And this way, I wouldn't have to stack around the huge enormous thing in the big kiln.

So I bought an oversize tub at BiMart--the bottom section being too big to fit in a standard 5-gallon bucket--brought home three buckets of Best Possible White, and unpacked my overglaze kit from the suitcase it flew home from Viterbo in. Asked if I could fit in a few small birds or butterflies and got a definite no. Flowers only please. So I channeled my inner 16th-century Dutchman and laid to.

Fanciful flowers? I'm good. Random arabesques? Let me at 'em. Completely mismatched foliage? Sure, why not?

I sent photos to the client on Instagram, explaining that the lavender was a cobalt mineral that would come out blue, really, and what did she think? She wanted more flowers. Fill in the white space, put some on the spouts. sigh. So I did, and you know? It didn't come out half bad.

It sucks

I don't often see anything in the Ceramics Monthly suggestions column that's useful. They're either too esoteric or too basic, things I'm never gonna need or things I've long since figured out on my own. This one, though, was perfect.

I'd struggled for years with the best way of glazing big cookie jars and canisters. They're too heavy and awkward for dipping tongs, and if I poured the inside, there was no good way to dip the outside that didn't end up with glaze overlaps that show up as a different color in firing. But some clever potter found an answer.

This is a dent puller. A thing auto body shops use to fix small dents in your fender or side panel. It's a little suction cup that gloms onto your car hard enough to pop out the damage. And it's perfect for suspending a jar or canister for a vertical dip into the glaze bucket.

There are some caveats. You have to pour glaze into the inside first, pour it out, and wipe the rim. You have to keep it perfectly vertical going in to dip the outside, so as not to plop out the air pressure inside the jar. And you need a perfectly smooth surface to latch onto, which means paraffin wax dip, not liquid wax resist. But within those parameters, it works a charm. I moisten the suction cup with a little water before engaging, tug to test the seal before committing to the glaze, and support the jar with my hand on the inside, against the dry inner glaze surface as soon as it's out of the bucket again, in case the suction fails.