Color and Distortion

A new clay for me (Rod's Bod)  was not working with my normal glazes and stains, coming out too dark, and much too uniform.  In desperation, and to use up the remaining 50 pounds of clay, I started a series of hexagonal pots, with the intent of putting a Carbon Trap Glaze to give some pattern and texture, and to hide the clay.  The clay is an absolute joy to work with, the problem is with how it looks when done.

In any case, the first pot to come out of the kiln was spectacular, great coloring, fantastic color trapping, fire marks on most of the pot, a bit warped, but tolerable.  See the pots on skyviewsucculents.com.  The next two came out with small cracks, unsellable, but still interesting.  The two after that cracked in bisque.  The next two came with great markings again, but this time so badly warped as to be useless.  The next came out cracked, and then two without much warping, but with no carbon trapping and no interesting co
lor.  An experiment gone bad.,  Back to other stoneware.