Cobalt Pieces from the Workshop with Kinichi Shigeno

I had the honour recently to take a one day workshop with Kinichi Shigeno, and learned some of his techniques working with cobalt.

I wasn't sure quite what to expect, other than I looked up some of his work, and it was quite detailed and beautiful.  So I brought along 2 bisqued plates, a vase, and a mug, to decorate.

Kinichi brought some cobalt powder, which we mixed with water in a tiny cup, for our detail work.  Jay had also mixed up some cobalt solutions, for which he had made some test tiles.  The darker stain (which went on purple) was labelled 6388 mason mix, and the lighter one (which went on blue) was labelled 6339 mason mix.  I decided I would make a couple of pieces from each.

The technique we used was to cut out shapes (in my case, cherry blossoms) from newspaper, and adhere them with liquid latex.  I also brushed on the branches directly in latex (the red lines in the first photo below).  The plate was thrown from Columbia Buff w/Grog clay, but I had covered the inside with white slip, with black underglaze on the rim and back.

We sprayed on the cobalt mixture, then removed the paper and latex.  After that, we used the tiny cup of cobalt mix, to brush on fine details.

This is the result :

Quite stunning, right?

The second plate was again CB w/Grog covered in white slip, and with black underglaze on the rim. I skipped the newspaper and just painted both the branches and flowers in latex :

This time, I added a newspaper moon while spraying the plate, and then removed it and lightly sprayed again. 

I did a similar thing with a CB w/Grog mug.

The effect is quite magical, I think :

The mug and plate make a pretty good set, even though I had not planned it that way.  Both of them are sprayed in Clear Glaze, with the plate having Deep Blue glaze on the back, and the mug being dipped on the rim with Daly Blue (to create the purple rim).

The vase, I again finished in the darker cobalt spray, this time using triangles of newspaper as a resist for the spray :

At the end of the workshop, we had a small amount of cobalt in our cup remaining, so I have another sculptural piece which I subsequently decorated in cobalt, but since that one is a Christmas present, it will need to wait until I am able to post it.

Oh, and I took a photo of the master, who was a really kind and humble man, working on one of his pieces in between guiding us and helping us with the spraying :

Some of his works involve several layers of subsequent colors and firings, and are quite elaborate.