This was kind of an experiment as I wanted to play around with some carved greenware press molds.
When I had the face ready to add the leaves, I meant to use the same recycled clay I had been using, but accidentally grabbed some porcelain. I decided to roll with it because I thought it might look cool in the end.
The leaves were pretty thin, so I ended up (intentionally and unintentionally) breaking the ends off most of them because I figured they wouldn’t make it through bisque fire at my community studio anyway. I also wanted kind of an ancient stone look, so I wasn’t concerned about cracking, etc. if the porcelain dried too fast over the groggy clay.
(Side story: A little more than a decade ago, I ended up going on a last minute trip to England to fill anvacancy with a choir who was going to be in residence at a cathedral for ten days. One of my favorite things I remember seeing was the green man’s face carved into the intricate details in a sode chapel off the cathedral. During the Reformation, ALL of the heads ended up being lopped off of all the saints in the chapel, but the green man was left alone.)
Anyway, the different clay made it a breeze to glaze, as I just used one single glaze (one of my favorite ones that can have a lot of variation based on application, temperature, reduction, etc.) on the whole thing, figuring the clay bodies would react differently enough.
I actually really like how it turned out, haha. I need to play around with this more!
Maybe I’ll try again with slightly more robust leaves and branches (and aupport for them)!