And so he is glazed

And now Ben Stung has glaze. Each face jug is glazed different, to suit the personality. In Ben's case his hat/lid is done in transparent. The speckles in the dark clay will create a lovely texture for his hat and it will preserve the yellow bees. You can see how the wax has resisted the glaze and left the eyes, teeth, and bees their proper colours. The colour chosen for his face will not be revealed at this time. Why? Because it is not all that unusual for the glaze to come out a different colour than chosen and creating false expectations at this point isn't sensible (and would make it appear that I don't know what I'm doing).

In fact, look long and hard at him now because this could be the past time Ben is seen. The glaze firing has a few dangers:

• Glaze running and sticking to the shelf in a way that destroys Ben when he's removed;


• The glaze being a colour you can't possibly abide and it's only fair to put Ben out of his misery;


• A fault that made it through the bisque firing takes this opportunity to explode (and will destroy the pieces adjacent in the kiln, as well as maiming Ben);


• The glaze "crawls", leaving unsightly bald patches which can be refired, but seldomly prove successful;


• A succesful firing can turn horribly wrong, and the base of the piece can inexplicably drop out, even a couple of days later; and


• Never forget that in the course of unloading, things have been known to drop when handled carelessly!

That's just to name a few of the dangers Ben Stung now faces as he enters the kiln for a second time.

So keep an eye here. I hope that none of these things happen and Ben Stung will make his debut here in the next couple of days!