I had planned to do a whole series of these tiles, based on the tarot. I love tarot symbolism and imagery. I spent a lot of time pounding out the clay into flat slabs, cutting it to size, and then (hardest of all) trailing stained slip freehand from a bottle. I tried to fire them in my kiln, only to discover that the speed control had broken. Many explosions. After I had done about eight of them, I tried to candle them in an oven set to a low heat. Nope. Another explosion. Ironically the only tiles that didn’t explode were the ones which symbolized destruction and chaos. Hmm.
The slip didn’t turn out as black as I would have liked. If I were to do it again, I would have used three dimensional glaze to get the outlines I wanted.Â
Now that I have these tiles, I’m not sure what I am going to do with them. Nothing seems permanent enough to merit the work that went into them. They’re low-fired, so they aren’t suitable for something that gets a lot of wear (a paver) or a lot of water (a fountain) and because they’re textured, I don’t really want to use them on a table. That leaves either attaching them to one of my garden walls, or framing it in a shadowbox and hanging it on the wall.
Or maybe selling it on etsy.
