Too much is as bad as too little

Hello everyone. We are still in a dark, cold, damp spell. I have stayed at home except for short dog walks. My work got busy and I need to focus on it.

Today, I will show you porcelain fired in reduction. They are my test pieces. Although I had known that porcelain become blueish white in reduction firing, I didn't expect they become this blue!  Those we used to use in Japan were not this blue in my memory.

I decorated these porcelain pots just before I finished packing the gas kiln. I ran out of ideas of decoration; I don't like repeating same design. As I was moving the brush, I thought, 'Umm, is it too much?' but I kept going. Alas, it became OTT!

It started ok.

 

Somehow I felt more was more at that time. 

Ah-oh. Too late. I did too much!

Back is still nice, though! lol

This is yunomi (tea cup). Despite the mistake with the bowl above, I somehow carried on. There is too much cobalt decoration all over, even inside! I soon remembered Japanese saying, 'Too much is as bad as too little'. Aghh, too late!

Yunomi with too much decoration!

Last one is something I cherish. I love the pine ash glaze. I make it myself; I burned the pine branches found on the campus nearby, washed the ash about 50 times, and made the glaze. But the problem is that I don't have enough pine branches to make lots of ash, so the ash glaze is only a small quantity. I poured inside, but I had to brush outside. I love the colours. It has the atmosphere of early spring. 

Inside is natural celadon. Ash has higher iron content than other trees easily available In Japan. So when they make celadon glaze from scratch, Japanese use pine trees.  

Pine ash glaze, natural celadon colour