Marlene Madison was our third guest at the most recent ‘Raid’. She had painted three plates on a visit here prior to Monday’s gathering, and then chose another five so there are lots of delightful shoes and one little apartment scene to add to her collection of squarish plates.  

We also refired an earlier plate of hers. It had developed crazing, been refired successfully but then produced crazes again. I’ve fired it again, on the top shelf, and at present it looks all healed and lovely but who knows whether it will show stress between clay and glaze once more. If it does, that tells me that the different cone 04 earthenware clay that I used for one session here does not fit with my glaze properly. It also suggests that others made of that clay could do the same damn thing. We’ll see.  

I hope you’re happy with the results of your shoe-painted plates, Marlene. It’s really fun to have you all here and I look forward to finding out which artists will choose to come and paint plates in June.