More Erosion

After letting the water eroded tests dry, I then fired them to vitrification (1280 degrees). I noticed however that when they had dried, the lovely gradiented tidemarks from where the water had soaked into the bone dry clay had gone. This was dissapointing, however it meant that some of the pieces had textured form seemlessly transforming into unflawed form.

Anyway I put them in the kiln and this was the result...

The latter ones are a combination of torn, dropped and water eroded ones. I felt as if I had to try these out on a larger form. I decided to cast one of the green plastic bowls from the plaster studio in ceramics. This was due to its sophisticated yet still simple form. The green bowl has a small foot on which lifts the curved form up off the surface it sits on just enough to give it a more elegant and uplifted overall feel. I cast one of these (as with everything else I had done so far; in porcelain) and then used the same water erosion technique on the rim of that form.



This form gives a far more refined look to the bottom half of the form, and using that in conjunction with the roughness and breakdown of the water erosion technique really seems to work. I feel that when cast in porcelain, the smooth form looks so plain and elegant, and the eroded section exposes the inside of this 'perfect' clay wall, creating not only a window into the clay body, but creating a tension between the two textures.

I want to accent this broken down texture. To do this I will explore the use of oxides and slips in the water that the form breaks down in.