My latest experiment in the kiln is a pot melt. The idea is to fill an Italian (higher quality) terracotta flower pot with glass scraps and raise it off the kiln shelf using mullite (kiln shelf material) strips. Heat the kiln to 899°C and hold for 90 minutes. The (hopefully) molten glass flows through the holes in the base of the pot to fall and spread over the prepared kiln shelf. I did build a dam to form a 34 cm circle to hopefully avoid glass spilling over the kiln shelf edges.
I used 1.5 kg of scrap glass which should form a 30cm circle about 6mm thick. Two problems; too much black so what glass I could see flowing was very dark and too many strips of glass too long for the pot so as it melted it spilled over the pot edge.
Pot melts can produce the most amazing patterns as the glass spreads out and reforms. I am hoping for a nice circle to mount in a stand as a sculptural table centrepiece or backlit on a sideboard. Worst case I will cut the result into strips like a pattern bar and refuse into other plates.
One of the great things about working with glass is that every seeming disaster can be recycled and incorporated into another piece. I love the fact that there is very little waste as even the smallest scraps can be sprinkled over pieces or ground into powders to use later. The only problem is finding time to plan and make pieces as well as preparing moulds and recycling glass. No wonder all the best artists have assistants to do all that for them so they can concentrate on being creative.
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