I fired 2 of these mugs with the same glaze -- T's green -- in the same firing in the ECC school kiln. Same clay, same glaze, same firing. Should come out the same, right? Ha, why should it? It depends what the glaze is made of; some glazes are very invariant, some change with thickness of application, temperature, amount of reduction in the firing, and certainly over different clays.
In this case the kiln is not under perfect control; it's a fairly large, hard used, gas kiln in a communal studio, loaded by a varying group of people. The temperature of firing varies a fair amount from top to bottom, the reduction is variable and spotty, and I do not know the kiln well enough to predict what will happen to a pot in a particular place in the kiln. I did not load these cups into the kiln. A setup for mysteries.
Here is the second cup. Same...
Obviously they were not loaded together. This is what that glaze does at a slightly higher temperature: a darker color, glossy, translucent, and with those great crystal speckles.
Is one "right"? I was aiming for the second. I do like both, though not as a set. And I actually like it that things are somewhat out of control -- after the initial shock.
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