Waxed Teeth

Now time for some waxed teeth!

I've been experimenting with watercoloring the teeth, then dipping them in a crockpot full of "clear" beeswax

I say "clear" because it's really not clear, it's a bit cloudy so the more times you dip the piece, the more subtle the color becomes

There's also a really interesting difference between watercoloring on bisqueware (fired to cone 06 and therefore VERY porous)

And watercoloring on high fire porcelain (fired to cone 10 and therefore not porous at all)

And also if you dip the piece in the wax when the watercolor is still wet, vs. dipping it after the color is completely dry

So these are the first of what will hopefully be many waxed teeth

There’s a couple more that aren’t represented here, mostly because they were without watercolor–just bare porcelain dipped in wax.  Most likely when it comes time to do the actual installation of the “dreamcatcher”, I will only use bare porcelain + wax and skip the watercolor step.  I do like the effect of the watercolor, but I think when there is 100+ of them, it will just be overwhelming and confusing if they are all watercolored.  I’d rather keep it clean and simple.  So for now, the watercolor will only happen on a select few and maybe on future sculptural teeth that are separate from the “dreamcatcher” installation.  Just for the purposes of experimenting, I recently fired a couple teeth to cone 6, something inbetween 06 and 10 to see how that temperature takes the watercolor.  I’ll probably post those in the next week or so for comparison…  Plus they will be out of an oxidation kiln instead of reduction so that will also cause some variation in the overall tone of the porcelain.  Stay tuned for more fun with porcelain, slip-casting, teeth and wax!