Continuing with Glaze experiments

After playing around with gloop, I eventually decided that although the effects were interesting the glaze needed so much more work to get it to do what I wanted, and even if I had resolved the issues with it,  I felt it wasn't really the right 'fit' for the work so I chose to focus on using more lichen/crawl looking glazes which I felt would fit bitter with my fungi inspired forms.

I had begun to experiment with magnesium carbonate and silicon carbide in glazes and had had some success with getting sculptural effects. 

Below are pics of tests of lava style glazes using silicon carbide, but the best results were achieved when I used a finer mesh/grade of silicon carbide as this definitely impacted on how puffy and sculptural the glaze became.

Below: Red stoneware with Marilee Lava glaze from Linda Bloomfield's book on Special Effects glazes. This recipe has a 5% addition of copper carbonate.

The biggest reaction and sculptural effect achieved with silicon carbide was a recipe I found on Glazy called  Akiko's crater glaze, described by the contributor Kenneth Ibbett as a a base recipe for Volcanic glaze given to him by his teacher Akiko Hirai. This is the recipe:
Nepheline Syenite, Barium Carbonate, Kaolin, Silica, Rutile & Silicon Carbide. (I used both 200 and 4000 mesh) both puffed up really well as you can see in the test samples and the piece below.

I was pleased with the overall effect of this glaze as I felt it worked really well with the aesthetics of the pieces I was making, and decided it would be one I would use again.