Idea

To link the idea of using clay within my final piece, I am going to gather a range of objects that are meaningful to me which relate to my memories and I will press them into clay. I will take the objects out and pour plaster over the top of the clay which will allow the plaster to set in the gaps where the objects were, creating an outline like they have done in the picture below.

I found this picture by an artist on twitter:

Fireplace and Tiles

As I have mentioned in previous blog posts, I have been making tiles to fill in the gaps between my oil painting and the fireplace which I am placing it in. The tiles have been inspired from victorian style fireplaces with the tiles covered in glaze - which my trials show.

An artist which relates to my project is William Morris as his work resembles victorian fireplaces with tiles inside of them:

These tiles are very similar to what I have produced as they are inside the fireplace and they surround the actual fire, which is where my picture will be placed.

The whole idea comes from victorian times as they had these types of fireplaces:

Although they are not the complete same style, it still shows how they used to have the tiles placed inside the fireplaces surrounding the fire and these images relate to my project fantastically as they have inspired me to produce my own tiles with memories written into them, reflecting the meaning of my project.

Fireplace Trial with Tiles and Previous Trialls

I tried out my final piece idea by placing my picture in the fireplace and covering the gaps with my tiles that I have had fired. I think this works extremely well and I have decided to use the clear glaze, as I feel like the blue and the mixed blue and yellow don't work well with the colours that I have used within my painting. The clear glaze will emphasise the colours in the painting, allowing the warmth of the memories to be shown clearly. 

I know that I now have enough tiles to go into the spaces between the painting and the fireplace. After the Christmas holidays, I am measure the space where the painting and tiles will go and have a piece of wood cut to that size so that I stick both the painting and the tiles to it, enabling the final piece to be put together. Before Christmas, I will make sure that all of my tiles are glazed with clear glaze, allowing me to crack on with putting together my final piece in January. 

I produced these trials before I started to write into my tiles with the block letters. I was originally going to write into them, like the trial below, however I wanted to go for a neater look for I chose to use the block letters which worked much better:

Before I used the idea of brushing the letters with iron oxide, I mixed together iron oxide and clay and put the clay into the channels where the letters were and scraped the excess of, allowing the letters to have a contrasting colour; however after using a neater way of writing the letters into the tiles, this idea was scrapped. This shows that I experimented with different techniques to see which worked best:

Glaze and More Tiles

These tiles below are the tiles that have been fired in the kiln and are ready to all be glazed.

Below, I have covered this tile with a clear glaze and it will be placed in the kiln to see how it turns out.

Below are the other colour glazes that I trialled on a couple of different tiles. I mixed the powder with water and then brushed the liquid on top.

Before glazing the tiles, I brushed the edges of the label outline and the letters with iron oxide (the bottle of purple powder) to stop the glaze from losing the detail of the letters and the detail of the label. The iron oxide with also enable the letters to stand out, stopping the glaze from running into the gaps. 

The blue glaze below did show the detail of the letters and label the best, however I also like the clear glaze, as it looks less 'busy'. I think I will probably end up using the clear glaze on all of my tiles.

Below are more tiles that I have made to be fired.