Glazing Other Students Work

Many students sign up to take ceramics at the college and for one reason or another some of them drop out of the class. Sometimes they drop the class early in the semester and other times they drop at the last moment. In the meantime, they have been working with the clay and creating various ceramic pieces. Our classroom has an overabundance of student work which has been saved in case the students came back for their work. Since our shelves were running out of room, our instructor gave us permission to test some glazes on some of the student work which has been left in the classroom for quite some time. We are loading a glaze kiln load so we started glazing as many pieces we could find to completely fill the kiln.

I couldn't believe it when I was searching the shelves for work to glaze, I found some pieces I had made a while ago on the shelf too. I made the three soap dishes above several years ago from slabs. The dishes are three different sizes and stand on three log rolled feet. I experimented with a few more glazes on these three, but my experiments didn't turn out like I wanted them to. One part of the kiln went to Cone 11 or more and I think the glaze color I used washed out. I am going to try reglazing the soap dishes in hopes the glazes turn out more like I expected.

These coil pots were done by past ceramics students in their first class. I can recall making coil pots in one of the very first classes I took in ceramics. Neither of the pots were signed by the students. I glazed the first coil pot with a Tom Coleman glaze Fake Ash. There is some nice color variation in this glaze and I really like it. The next coil pot was glazed with another Tom Coleman glaze, Tea Dust Black. I want to try this glaze on a smooth surface next time to see if the tea dust will be more visible. This is an interesting glaze which contains some coppery brown highlights as well as the smallest flecks of the golden tea dust.

When glazing other's work the other day I found I felt more free to experiment - not worrying so much whether I might ruin a piece I had worked on for some time. I felt the same way with the soap dishes, since I had made them so many years ago. I think I will start making a few extra pieces, bisque them, and then store them for several months. Of course, that means having the room and a safe place to store them till they are ready to glaze. I'm off to do some reglazing today.