Sweater mugs have always been a big deal for fans of Amy Ponce Pottery. I know I love using mine. And I almost always glaze them in either my blue or my spotted white.
This mug didn't know what was happening. She had been dipped into the glaze bucket like the others and she comfortably awaited the her trip to the kiln.
And then, to her great surprise, I whisked her back to my bench and painted a few layers of Light Flux to her rim.
Some mugs don't mind that kind of surprise. But this one sure did.
No one had told her this additional step was coming.
It wasn't happening to the other mugs, just to her.
And didn't the potter know that adding flux is a little bit risky? It is a type of glaze whose very point is to make glaze runny, and runny glaze runs the risk of sliding all the way down the clay while in in the kiln and fuzing to the kiln shelf and ruining the piece. What was the potter thinking?
I told this mug to quiet down and answer honestly: Was she actually concerned that the running glaze would become catastrophic? Didn't she trust that I knew what I was doing?
Or...was she just irritated that her expectations had been confounded?
Was she just uncomfortable needing to flex with the change of plans?
Once out of the kiln, when she got a look at my work despite her complaints, she agreed that the potter's idea was a pretty good one.
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