Dapple Grey Boreas in bone china for sale

I just completed glazing the bone china Boreas Percheron sculpture pictured above. This piece ended up with a minor leg deformity in the casting process. It is not that noticeable unless you're looking for it, and the piece is otherwise perfect. It would have been a shame to just discard it. I put a really nice color on him to compensate, and he is for sale at a good price; hopefully putting a china Boreas into someone's hands who might not have been able to manage one before now. I am offering him for sale to the first serious buyer to respond.

Click on the photo to jump to the web page that has all the sale information and lots of photos.

Books open for summer/fall china glazing

I decided to go ahead and schedule some commissions for china custom glazing for this summer and fall. Even if I am not into sculpting anything at the moment, I find that I do still enjoy the glazing work—especially if I space the pieces out enough to not feel pressured. I got a little jammed up with too much work this winter—which put me right off glazing of course!—but I think I am learning how many I can comfortably take on in a month. I'm not traveling too much this summer (only one trip in June) so I'll actually be home for a long stretch for a change!

I can't commit to any of my own bone china sculptures just yet, but I think I will be able to soon. Production on those is still slow because they are still having pieces not turn out right in the kiln (due to Donna learning my molds) so I can't yet get much in the way of firm delivery on anything. I won't be taking on any commitments on any of them unless I actually have a piece here in my hands. I am hopeful I will get more Boreas Percherons this month to fill some requests I already have which are on hold. I have four Optime Arabians on order; if those come in I will be taking commissioned-colors on some of them. And I still remain hopeful they will get a few more Caprice warmbloods out of the molds.

And, I do recognize that all these pieces are now getting pretty old—and everyone instead wants the newest/hottest latest/greatest thing as usual. I think I may place my last order to England on all my existing china work this year (Streetwise, Caprice, Heart of Darkness, Boreas, and Optime), and then that will be IT, molds destroyed. Definitely time to move on from these. Maybe if I finally glaze even my own "stash" of chinas, I'll be forced to sculpt something new just to have something to put in the kiln!

So drop me a line if you always wanted one of my chinas glazed—even if not right away—so I will be sure to have enough pieces made in that last batch.

If you have a bisque or unpainted gloss china piece by another company or sculptor, let me know what color you were thinking of, and I will quote you a price. Note: I don't want to glaze anything smaller than about 5" tall, sorry! I am interested in glazing the new Horsing Around "Sharif" Arabians. I ordered two myself and have taken one other commission already, but I could schedule one more in next fall.

You can contact me with your requests using this form.

Many thanks!

The Kiln is a Harsh Mistress

I got back from our simply wonderful vacation last week, needing to get up to speed on the glazing work I have taken on this spring.

I learned yet again, that the kiln does not suffer fools gladly at all.

I had my first-ever kiln accident on Thursday, with a china piece owned not by me but by a customer, unfortunately. It was the Tumlinson "Majestuoso" I mentioned in this blog post in March.

It was in the kiln for the first firing and I forgot to prop it up on stilts off the kiln floor. If you don't do that with these pieces on big china bases, they are almost guaranteed to break a leg. Which is exactly what it did. The front down leg broke clean at the pastern. (The back leg is still attached to the base.) Apparently these bases cool down at a different rate than the thin legs, and if you don't get air circulating under the base in the kiln the base expands or something and the leg breaks.

I did know about this base issue, and have glazed other pieces on bases with no problems. I simply forgot this time when I loaded him in the kiln. (Normally the non-base horses go right on the kiln floor with no props, and I was firing other pieces at the same time and forgot to stilt it).

Anyway, AAARGH! Fortunately and incredibly since this is a sold-out edition, I was able to find another Majestuoso in bisque, and will start again. I had put a lot of painting hours into it even though it was the first firing, since this is a really detailed color pattern, sigh. This was the first year I had relaxed a personal rule I had about not custom glazing any chinas for other people on a piece that was rare or not easily replaceable. Because of this very thing where a mistake was made or something went wrong in the kiln beyond my control. And the thing I feared has happened! I am very lucky even though I'm paying for the mistake with my wallet.

Interestingly, since the piece still had one leg attached, and it was a loss anyway, I tried a kiln-repair technique where you push clear gloss glaze into the break, and then paint more glaze all around it, and then re-fire it to the original gloss glaze temperature. And it seems to have worked. The glaze reflows all around the break and re-seals it. I've been handling it just as I would a non-broken piece and so far it hasn't re-broken. It'll never be as strong as the original, and I can never sell it as mint, but I think I will finish painting this one too and see if I can find a buyer.

Too bad, that when you do the re-glazing the colored glazes fire off all weirdly. He's now sort of blue-grey instead of bay-black!
Here is how it looked after it broke and before I re-glaze fired it:

and here's how it looks now! I think I can coax it into a blue/grey roan appaloosa...!


I also broke a tile this week due to my absent-minded stupidity. I think my head must still be somewhere in Italy. Probably in some dreamy little out of the way canal/street in Venice, ooooh aaaah what a wonderful place that was!

Streetwise Quarter Horse china for sale

Streetwise is my Quarter Horse sculpture, produced in highest quality bone china in England. The china edition is 25 pieces only, 19 of which have been finished in realistic horse colors so far.

This is the only unpainted gloss glazed bone china to be offered for sale. It makes a lovely art/display piece, comparable to the finest quality porcelains in the workmanship. If you are interested go to this web page for more photos and price information. Thank you!

Spring in Colorado!

Snow on the boyz this morning. Yesterday it was sunny and nearly 60°. Tomorrow it will be sunny and in the 50's. Just a typical April on the eastern slope of the Rocky Mountains!

Friday we head over to Rome for our trip, so I'll be out of contact with the rest of my world until April 28th. My parents will be watching over the house for us fortunately, and the boyz get to go back to their home-kennel for 2 weeks of "Kees Kamp". I am ready for the world class art in Florence, and to overdose on the drop-dead-gorgeous sights that Italy and the Mediterranean sea do best. This will probably be our last trip overseas for awhile (I think we've actually reached Europe-fatigue) so I hope it will be the most memorable one.

I should get more photos for my "McD World" album (see this previous blog posting) of locations in Venice, Florence, Croatia, and Rome again. (I didn't get a good shot of the McD's at the Pantheon last time, so I intend to try again. It pretty much epitomizes the "how could they" aspect of McD's locations right on top of world heritage sites!)

Hopefully when I get back I'll actually feel like finishing some art work. I am long overdue for something new to offer; I need to get excited about something. Even the stuff I have started in the sculpture dept. isn't really calling to me very hard, after promising starts. It is amazingly hard to get inspired to do even what you love to do, when you don't really have to do it anymore (for financial reasons anyway). I think retirement will be an interesting sort of new challenge in ways I never expected.

My thanks to you for reading my Blog!

Painted Keeshond Tile

Here's a painted Keeshond dog tile! It's actually a cast resin sample (heavily gloss-coated) that I painted up to have something to display at a couple dog shows next month, until I get the ceramic tiles going. If all goes as planned, that should be in May. I can't wait to get tiles to glaze; I'm totally spoiled now with ceramics and can't stand to paint with plain old acrylic paints anymore!

"Desperado" Glazing Final

Here is how the Tumlinson "Desperado" glazing turned out. What a pleasure to have the opportunity to glaze this gorgeous sculpture. Thanks Jeanene for commissioning me!