2005.5 - OYSTER TOADFISH

This is one of my favorite pieces because the glaze is wonderful. Again, I must credit someone else. Tony Kitagawa, our studio technician showed me how to do this. The dark brown is a standard temmoku glaze, and the white is a chun glaze. Both of these are traditional Japanese glazes. The mottling pattern is due to the way the chun reacts when it overlaps the temmoku. The neat and exciting part is the lighter brown, and the blue flashes. These come from a mixture of gerstley borate, which acts as a flux, and rutile, a mineral containing a form of iron that I sponged on over the glazes. Rutile seems to be a magic substance, and is always good for beautiful and unexpected results.