Albarello collab

I’ve been posting this project at some of its stages already. It has now been fired so I thought it was about time I did a write up.

Fired!

Background:

Many years ago I participated in the laurel prize tourney. I don’t recall what I was displaying, I think I was in the middle of the A& S challenge so neck deep in my decorative glazing obsession. The laurel prize tourney helps participants engage with a variety of laurels to receive useful feedback and advice. It’s also open to non-laurels to review so you can inspire and engage with the rest of the Sca as well. Individual laurels will often give various participants small tokens. In this year in particular, Master Alex the Potter presented me with two handthrown bisque fired albarello. At the time I had no way of firing them myself and I wasn’t confident that I could do this limited resource justice.

Now, years later, I’m throwing my own pots. I haven’t yet created an albarello I like but I’m close enough. I can also get anything I like commercially fired to stoneware. Time and beyond to do something with the bisque I’ve had since before I moved to this state (at least 5 years ago). I’ll admit, I was really worried this mystery bisque wouldn’t hold up to the high firing temperature. Especially after the slumping seen in the Olla lid mystery bisque.

The original choice which was closer in shape to the bisque	Extant arbarello from the Louve ref. OA 4091.

On inspiration:

On the right is the original choice. Unfortunately when I sketched it onto the bisque the symbols just didn’t balance right. So I switched to something else. The left is my final choice. I’ve had this image pinned to my ceramic inspiration page for a while. I’ve loved the simplicity of the component elements and the complexity of the background work for sometime. This style really has been a favourite of mine for a while and this seemed like the perfect time to execute it. Part of my decision lay in the colour fastness if black oxide and cobalt blue. Both can withstand high temperature firing with pretty good colour consistency. I couldn’t be sure how other colours, like the super fickle purple, would do so very late period Italian designs are out for now.

Of the two design choices, the second one was more balanced once sketched onto the bisque using 6B pencil.

On execution:

Glazing this took a fair while. I worked the main body in sections with the main design free handed and then double glazed to ensure colour integrity. The background super detailed swirls were a single stroke with a 5zero paint brush trimmed down to have shorter bristles and increase its stiffness. I’m pretty happy with the colour consistency achieved there. I was a little worried they’d end up streaky it grey.

The blue is ‘Cobalt Blue’ from Chrysanthos. It was painted on as a single layer as it was important to me that the black detail come through the blue. I added more blue than was on the original design because I had more foot space and thought the colour balance worked better. I’m not a huge fan of the free blue leaves at the top, I much prefer the blue outlined in black.

I designed the foot pattern myself utilising elements from the extant item. I considered a detailed swirl pattern in the background but decided that it would reduce the impact of the main panels. I really needed more light space to balance the overall look. I think it is important to understand not only the design context but the impact of the piece as a whole. I took for inspiration the bold black line features seen in many items of the time. I’m really pleased with how this came together. Using the lines also let me tie them into the shoulder pattern. Again, I could have overlooked this geometrical change and continued the extant pattern down but it wouldn’t have worked with the shape of the bisque. I did consider a vine design but decided the area would be to thin and the vines would look weird as a result. Plain black bars helps divide the d ensign

Elements without detracting from them.

On the future:

Overall, I’m very pleased with how this piece came out and I’m super relieved it didn’t deform in the kiln! I probably wouldn’t change the rim decoration even though it doesn’t overly appeal to me because it is a direct copy of the extant item. I will be using the other bisque item to trial an Italian or Spanish polychrome design next now I’m more confident in the integrity of the bisque in the high firing temperature.