| Would you like to hear about the Spark
Gap Incident? Kristina knows this story... only too well!
I was painting my Sparkie, and for some bizarre reason, decided to paint his body when he was bisque. Anyway, when I applied glaze, the hard spot kept the paint from staying put, and basically it wiped away. Or something like that, (I have wiped it from memory because it was a BAD IDEA.) but the upshot was that after glazing, poor Sparkie looked just awful, with a big flaw on his back under his glaze. Having nothing to lose, I decided to take yucky chestnut Sparky and make him a bay. Over the glaze. Hummm... I sprayed Mr. Sparky with black on his legs, mane, tail, face, and obviously on his back over his flaw. Carefully, carefully, back into Ur he goes. (Ur is the name of my big kiln... Sumer is the little guy.) Back up to glaze temperature. Inside of the hot kiln, as the glaze gets warmer, it begins to melt... soon it is circulating over the surface, like a molten lake on a strangely shaped planet... but instead of tides and waves, the glaze actually moves up and down, as small areas that are hotter move up, and cooler areas move down. For some reason, these up and down areas are evenly distributed over the surface. Finally, the kiln reaches temperature (about 1,841 degrees) and shuts off. Sometime during the cooling, the glaze stabilizes, and like Arctic ice, preserves a story. Next day, when Ur is cool, I remove the Sparky. Instead of an evenly colored bay horse, he is DAPPLED. Yes, really, dappled. The convection currents pushed the paint away from the hot spots, and retained it in the cool spots. His mane and tail retained black on the "ridges", and the "valleys" are chestnut, since apparently the "valleys" got hotter. Most bizarre. He is still in the china cabinet, and is one of the most unusual horses we ever fired. No, I wouldn't suggest this as the shortcut to dappling, unless you want perfectly round, uniform spots all over the horse. Maybe on a Victorian rocking horse... Joanie
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