Coloured Lichen Glaze on white stoneware

I wanted to see what the lichen glaze would look like if coloured, and thought that it would be best to do this on a white clay body. I had a large bisqued sphere of Ashraf Hanna stoneware left over from another sculpture and had kept this to utilise as a test piece for glaze.

I made up a batch of Linda Bloomfield's Lichen Glaze (see glaze note book) and then added different stains which I applied in random lines over the sphere.

Whilst in the glaze room I recalled a discussion about the effect of Nepheline Syenite added to clay body, that it can look very oozy, runny and gelatinous. I had seen Gavin Webster our AA2A artist use this previously in his work so I decided to try it out on the top of the piece, it's very strange material to apply weird thixotropic properties.

​Fingers crossed for some interesting results, here it is before glazing. I will add to the post with the results.

Here are the results ....

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It's really interesting to see what the lichen glaze has done to some of the stains I added to the glazes, the lilac and yellow coloured stains  have blended and mixed well showing some good crawling, this could look really striking on a darker clay body.

The chartreuse green has almost disappeared apart from the edges and the deep red stain looks like it's been pushed back and is sitting behind the lichen surface but the glaze hasn't properly crawled either.. 

I love the oozy, wet gel like effect of the nepheline syenite, it has such weird, organic properties to it that I need to explore how it takes colour to see what effects are achievable. I can see this working oozing out of cavities in fungal sculptural forms.