Ninja Junior Crawl

Lidded Jar by Adela Arciga. The Ninja Junior Crawl Glaze is used only on the lid, where it was applied over a copper/cobalt glaze that caused it to melt.

The quarter ended last week with final critiques and final photos of work. In my clay classes the last week before finals are spent glazing and firing kilns, so that by the end of the week most students are done working and are just waiting on kilns. I also have them all take photographs of their work on a nice clean backdrop and put them in a folder shared with me. The work looks so much better on a backdrop and I like them to get the practice of taking good quality photos of their work. Even if they never do pottery again, they have this record of what they made. All the photos shared in this blog were taken by the students themselves (I did crop some of the students' photos).

Mug by Amber Ryan. Ninja Junior Crawl was applied over a cobalt glaze that doesn't run or flow too much. The dark spots on the side and handle are where the NJC glaze fell off before firing.

This quarter's wheel and hand-building classes were particularly strong. One indication of this was that all students had all but two of their works glazed and finished on time for their last critique. This probably shouldn't be a surprise, but it isn't unusual for hand-building projects to break before or during firing and it isn't unusual to have a few students who just don't get their work glazed in time to be fired, or at all.

Lidded Jar by Lauren Coffey. Ninja Junior was applied on the lid over a  fairly think coat of a semi-transparent glaze.

This quarter I was firing lots of kiln loads at the end of the quarter, but I didn't have really any abandoned student work to deal with after finals were over, meaning the students either took their work home, loaned for the Spring Student show, or donated it to the studio. On the other side of the equation, both final critiques were lots of fun and the students had great work. 

Bowl by Amber Ryan. This bowl has NJC only on the bottom, again over the blue glaze she used on the mug above.

In the throwing class in particular, there were some trends I noticed as far as the forms students chose to make. I'm not sure if a glaze choice can be a trend, exactly, but during their final critique my throwers spent a lot of time discussing our Ninja Junior Crawl glaze. This is a glaze recipe I developed in graduate school and brought to the YVC studio during my second year (while I was heavily pregnant). It was named after my daughter's tendency to kick fairly hard before she was born. I remember throwing for class one day and she kicked so hard she moved my arm.

Tiny bowl by Taelynn Loyd with just NJC

The conversation during the critique focused on students' preferred methods of applying the glaze. Ninja Junior is a crawl glaze, meaning it is designed to have some thickness and pull away from itself (or crawl) on the surface of the pot. When applied alone, as in Taelynn's tiny bowl above, it has a matte texture and cracks in the surface. The edges are linear and the edges can start to peel upwards. With thick applications, it can fall off before firing, or even peel up so far during firing that it barely seems attached. If it is applied excessively thickly, it can start to melt, but it will still pull away into separate pieces.

Lidded Jar by Lauren Coffey with NJC on the lid over a runny copper glaze

When this glaze is applied over another glaze, the other glaze can impact the texture and the shape of the NJC glaze. The reaction of the two glazes together lowers the melting point of the combination. This is sometimes called eutectics. A glaze that melts during firing, but retains a more satin texture will cause Ninja Junior Crawl glaze to also melt a bit, rounding out or flattening the individual sections of the NJC glaze over the top. A glaze that melts to a high gloss finish and also moves on the surface of the pot when in the kiln will cause NJC to start to move and mix with the gloss glaze during firing. In the images shared here, the dark blue glaze melts the least. The red glaze melts the most.

Bowl by Taelynn Loyd

Of course the thickness of the Ninja Junior Crawl glaze also matters. In Taelynn's bowl above, she applied the blue fairly thin, but the NJC is fairly thick, causing it to look different from both of Amber's examples earlier in the post. The NJC on blue in Taelynn's bowl is divided into large glossy blobs, whereas Amber's mugs and bowl with the same blue glaze show smaller and more geometric divisions of the NJC, mostly because NJC was applied thinner.

Underside of bowl by Beau Filbert

Beau Filbert created a thick texture with several glazes, simply based on his application. In the bowl above, he applied a Copper Red glaze, which melted enough to create even drips all the way around, but not enough to drip onto the shelf. He used a think coat of Ninja Junior Crawl on the rim. Though is is a thin coat applied in a small area, we can see how it acts differently on its own and over the copper glaze.

Mugs by Beau Filbert

Beau did lots of experimentation with drips on the sides of both bowls and mugs. In the photo above, the mug on the far right has drips that similarly get thick at the bottom but don't melt off the piece. This glaze combination does not involve NJC.