Cloisonne Pendant (cont'd)

Progressing slowly on the pendant. For the background I wet-packed two layers of Grass Green for shadowing and then added a layer of Peppermint Green which needs a second or third coating. The butterfly wings have two layers of Rose Pink but the colour isn't as bright as I expected. I also added a layer of Perriwinkle in the tips of the wings but after firing it seems to have blended with the pink. The body has an opaque yellow until I can think of what else to do with it.

Pendant after two layers

Almost done. I wet-packed several more layers into the cloisonne and the colours are becoming more vibrant. The cloisonne was beginning to curve from all of the firings so the instructor helped me flatten the piece by heating it up and then smashing it flat between two heavy metal plates immediately after removing it from the kiln. It didn't seem like a very sophisticated technique but was very effective. I was skeptical that the enamel wouldn't just crack off. In fact, it would have if we had smashed it even 5 seconds later and the piece had cooled down too much. 

After the cloisonne was flat it was easy to stone, which involves scrubbing it under running water with a piece of carborundum (silicon carbide). This removed excess enamel that was covering the cloisonne wire so now the butterfly outline looks like it is glowing. The cloisonne will undergo one last firing to maturity next week.

Cloisonne Pendant

Last night I started my cloisonne pendant which involved using tweezers and my fingers to tediously form delicate thin strips of copper into shape and then adhere them to the pendant using Klyr-fire. The piece was then put in the kiln and heated until the copper strips started to sink into the clear flux base coat (but not touching the actual copper base).

This was the largest piece of copper I had which is about 4cm x 4cm. When I drew the butterfly onto paper and shaped the copper strips on top of the sketch I forgot that I had previously drilled holes into the top of the pendant. When I transferred the copper strips to the actual pendant I couldn't find an arrangement that avoided overlapping the wings with either of the holes. Because forming the butterfly shape had been so tedious I decided not to tamper further with the design and will just need to work with what I have.

The next step will be to wet-pack the enamel powder into the different cells (rather than sifting which offers less control). The pendant has to be pickled in between each firing since the copper strips are bare and will develop firescale each time. Since the wire was not bent completely flat you can see some small gaps between the strip and the pendant base in the top right photo. Once I begin to add layers of enamel into the cells the gaps will disappear and the strips will be held much more solidly in place.

Briarwood & Ivory

Here are earrings I created using a stencil that was too large for the actual pieces of copper. The base coat transparent Ivory put directly onto the copper. Above it I layered Briarwood for the stencil which ended up being a fairly "hard" colour. I had to do two coats for each piece, being careful to line up the stencil between layers. Then I fired both earrings together side by side to try and get an even distribution of heat. Even so the left earring turned out well but the right earring was about 2-3 seconds underfired so it didn't turn out as smooth as the other. How finicky!

Briarwood & Ivory earrings

 Next I worked on a pendant to go with the earrings. I used sections of the same stencil from the earrings to cover different areas of the pendant and am working through the second coat before putting it through a final firing.

Matching pendant

Abstract Cherry Blossom

Last night I worked on a pendant which didn't quite turn out as planned. I used white in my third layer to make some tree branches and then sifted about 4 different layers of pink, purple, and cream to try and produce something resembling a cherry blossom. It was all going fairly well until the very last firing where I was trying to get all layers to maturity so that the surface would be generally smooth and shiny. Because the previous seven firings had been successful I was surprised when I opened the kiln door and saw that the white enamel had been overfired and basically bled outwards.

It turns out that the white enamel that we got in our kits is a pretty hard enamel/colour and should only be used as the base coat and not for subsequent layers. Apparently I should have used what's called "foundation white" if I wanted to use white in a non-base layer (not very intuitive from the name). That would have been a softer enamel and wouldn't have required firing for so long. I ended up trying to add a few more layers of pink and green to cover up some of the white that had bled to the sides and that's where I left it at the end of the night. Not quite the way I wanted but not bad for a first design. I should call it "Abstract Cherry Blossom".

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.