Joined in fire

This is about the Goldie metal clays I’m using. I love making colorful things just from metals and since the new Goldies showed up, all I was thinking about was connecting them together.

As they all have different firing temperatures that can be really tricky, but I managed to make it a few times, so I wanted to make one piece with all of them together [I forgot Roman Bronze later;)]

When you join clays with different firing schedules it’s hard to make it in one firing, so ofcourse I had to try;)

I managed to make one flat circle of four clays all rolled together. [didn’t take the picture, but maybe I can add it next time]

I was careful not to mix them too much, trying to keep them in order, so the clear color stripes were visible.

Then I formed a leaf, it was Goldie Copper, de la Rosa, Goldie Snow and Bronze.

In the 1st phase of firing I decided to lave it for 1,5 hour in the kiln, on a steel net, the temperature was 350 C.

But after that I turned it up to 580 C just for Copper, for half an hour.

nothing bad happened;) it all looked well and I burried it in carbon.

In the second phase I decided to take a risk and go over the Snow Bronze temperature, I wasn’t sure if it won’t melt, but with Copper, de la Rosa Bronze and Goldie Bronze it seemed pointless to think these could sinter in a low temp.

So I went for Goldie Bronze temp. and left it in the kiln for 3 hours on 820 C, I also let it cool during the night and just went to sleep.

here’s what I found in the morning:

leaf patina m leaf patina back m

 

beautiful patina but with a small crack, so I repaired that and refired it again, 820 C or 40 minutes.

It all sintered nicely [not mentioning my usual Copper problems, but that’s a completely different story for another looong post;)]

The place for a natural garnet I picked before was filled with an investment that stopped clay from shrinking too much.

I tried different patinas, but decided to go with my usual liver of sulfur, gradually observing and trying to control the color that appeared during the process.

I remembered to give the piece as much polishing as possible without destroying the texture, that helps with patina colors a lot:)

bronze leaf2 m bronzeleaf daylight1m bronze leaf3 m

 

I had trouble making a picture of this piece, finally decided to try the natural light and it worked perfectly for the stone! Now you can see how it glows with it’s natural color:)

…hope someone will find that usefull, I still have no idea why I’m typing all that…;D