Horsehair Ceramics

Last week I made my third horsehair ceramic vase. In this sequence, I am taking pictures of other people's artistic endeavors. The ceramic pieces have been fired once and are in the bisque stage. On this day the pieces were fired to 1100º and when taken from the kiln, pieces of horse hair were applied. The hot vase acts like a magnet and hair burns onto the hot surface leaving really cool black lines. If too much hair is placed in one area, it just burns a dark spot.

Then ostrich or emu feathers were burned onto the surface. We placed the top of the feathers onto the vase and Musette used the tongs to hold the feather in place so the imprint would burn onto the surface of the vase.

The third substance to be applied was sugar. We sprinkled sugar to add more detail. You can see what happens when sugar hits that hot surface. The entire process takes 40 seconds or less.

This is my wedding vase before it was cleaned. You can see the dark imprint of the feather, the strands of horse hair. The speckled area is the sugar burns. Once the vase cools enough so it can be touched, it is cleaned with a towel, carefully brushing off the chard substances. The room stinks like singed hair and burned feathers. It reminds of of butchering chickens.

This was my first vase made two years ago. I think I used horse hair and some dog hair. Very coarse hair works best.

This was my second piece that I made last year. The vases are above the window on a ledge in our AZ home.

And this is the wedding vase all cleaned up and polished. Applying a gloss finish was the final step after it was cleaned. Isn't the burned feather really cool? There is a feather imprint on the other side, too.