With a range of fired forms created the next stage in the design process is to glaze these ceramic forms. Workshop staff gave me a one on one tutorial of how to properly glaze fired, forms this was much easier than I first thought briefly submerging the object into the liquid glaze. The main trouble I had with this process was ensuring there were no drip marks, I also found that the glaze could not sit flush with the bottom of the form or there was a chance of it exploding in the kiln. I was surprised at the colour difference between the fired sample board and the unfired glazed forms. This is almost impossible to see how the final piece will look and adds to the anticipation of seeing the final forms.
Through further resource sheets I learnt that glazes are multifunctional yet their most important quality is that they make ceramic objects more durable & hygienic to use.the other important aspect of glazes is their vast decorative qualities. There are limitless variations of decorative glaze their ingredients allow multiple recipies to develop this is amplified by the use of oxides. exploring the use of oxides on a small scale I found that generally speaking colouring oxides makeup a tiny percentage of any slip / glaze recipe, usually between 0.2 and 10%. To explore this further I created a range of small tile samples to experiment with different oxides within the glaze, exploring percentage and colour combinations, This gave some really surprising results and was a great way to learn about how many variations of glaze can be produced with the help of the oxidation process
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