Shino

Hi, to the millions of you out there who read this blog religiously you will certainly recall my mention of the shino glaze that we have at my studio, I'm sure many a sleepless night was spent wondering what said shino could possibly look like, well this is it, anticlimactic? Yeah. Its a shame, it doesn't run at all, those drip marks are from when I dipped it, yeah I meant to do that, I thought maybe if it was thicker, it might do something interesting like pin hole or crawl, nothing. I've noticed that it acts like a fire wall to the most runny of glazes too, glazes will not over run into it, and if its over or under another glaze it just freezes it and they stay exactly in the same place as where they were before firing. I've even noticed that if you scrape it when its wet to almost totally dry, the scratches don't soften or move at all! like you can get it to stand up off you pot quite a bit, how far can I get it will be my next experiment. Also I've noticed that this shino is WHITE. Like it will not orange unless you put a minuscule film like amount on you pot, and the iron in an iron oxide wash or the clay body won't affect it unless it's a "red" clay and even then it has to be applied really thin. One last thing, I've only fired it reduction, maybe oxidation is the way to go, stop fighting the whiteness of the glaze and try and use it...

I guess part of me wants to say that it's a boring shino, but instead I'll say its a very challenging shino with a lot of properties that are different from my expectations of what shino is supposed to do.