The hand pressed terracotta sculpture turned out well from the kiln, he is on the right compared to the cast-stone version, clear to see how much the clay shrinks, about one inch Now I pressed another one:  

Today after drying over the last ten days, and since yesterday in front of a fan on high, I put the cherub in the kiln on the Bartlett “slow bisque” program, but added two hours of preheat time which it will do via a 60 degree F ramp per hour to 200 degrees and then hold it there for two hours before continuing to ^1, which is 2079 degrees, then it has a ten minute hold before shutting off. I’m guessing it will be around 6 AM in the morning before it shuts off, and probably it won’t be before 6 PM tomorrow evening before I can remove him from…

A simply stunning work of art found at the Charles Luck building, 1111 34th St NW, Washington, DC, the larger version and additional photos of the pair of terracotta horse heads can be found here: LINK I strongly suspect these original pieces were largely hand sculpted, for the simple reason that they installed only one of these per stable building over the doorway. Obviously  these  types of terracotta pieces were made in a mold, but I am certain the ears were pressed separately in another mold and attached later while both the ears and the head were pliable. That would totally eliminate a lot of issues with fragility of the…

The first matt glazed version of this cherub is out of the kiln, it looks pretty good but I don’t like the gloss on what is supposed to be a matt glaze, I’ll be testing out a few other products I ordered.   The white crackle glazed version also did not turn out as expected, the jar of glaze which came was so thick it was like wallboard paste, it took 6-8 oz of water just to get it brushable, now I learned it has been discontinued, maybe these results are one reason why:  

The first hand-pressed terracotta cherub, made exactly the same way they made the architectural pieces for building facades in the 1890s has been removed from the mold. The experiment on this is a success, although I need to change a couple of things in the mold making process because there were some issues with the mold making compound I used that caused a very rough pitted surface, that roughness has transferred to the terracotta but that is an easily solved issue. The cherub is made from Continental course red clay with grog. Here’s how it was done in the old days, hand pressing the clay into plaster molds as these workers…

Now I have the first terracotta from the new mold, it turned out extremely well and I hope to fire it in the kiln this week,  

Here’s the first terracotta cast fired in my kiln, next to one of the cast-stone casts for size references, it’s clear the clay shrinks dramatically resulting in about a 1″ size loss.  

Since I had about a quart of Rebound 25 mold rubber left over I decided to use it to make another rubber positive in a small mold, so after brushing on some of the release on another old Polytek mold I brushed the first application and then poured the rest in the mold. Now 6 hours later it’s cured so I pulled it out and it had cast perfectly with no defects and just as smooth as the original. So the surface defects with the Econ 40 were the fault of the Econ 40 not the release or the Polytek mold. Think tomorrow I’ll make a plaster piece mold of…

I was able to make the first cast in ceramic today of the cherub plaque.  

Now that the Roman Ruins panel is essentially finished and needs to dry out slowly, I am ready to cast the wolf roundel st for a client in Brooklyn, NY who  plans to install it in the brick wall of his garage. I had to make a whole new mold of it due to the first mold’s rubber portion tearing far too easily and making it unusable. I had put off replacing the mold untill I had an order at hand for it since replacing a mold this size costs around $250 in materials and two days of work. Actually this set has two molds and the second mold should…