Introduction to Enameling

I started my enameling course at George Brown recently and I'm finding that it can be quite intimidating since you're dealing with powdered glass and a kiln at 1500 deg Celsius, and the difference between under-firing and over-firing a piece can be a matter of 5 seconds. The fact that you are supposed to avoid opening the kiln door too often (so as to prevent the temperature from dropping) makes it all the more challenging.

Creating various samples to play with colours

Samples. Above are some samples that I created in our first two classes. Each colour has its own characteristics and requires different firing times to reach sugar-fire, orange-peel, maturity, or clarity. There's no golden rule about how long each colour needs to be fired so the best way to get a handle on things is to try out some samples.

Layers.  The middle photo shows a project that gave me more practice with firing. The point of this project was to end up with five distinct layers of enamel (one for each semi-circle plus a base coat). It was discovered that the light blue (almost white) colour at the front of the piece was much harder than the other colours I selected. Even though it was the second layer to go on, the remaining three colours reached maturity while the light blue stayed at orange-peel.

Flower.  For this flower stencil piece the light blue and purple layers have been fired to maturity but the bright orange petals are still at sugar coat so the piece could stand to be fired one final time to get a completely smooth finish.