56 
RERAMIC STUDIO 
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BLACK STEIN 
Blanche Van Court Schneider 
WITH black paint carefully draw two lines one-sixth of an 
inch apart encircling the stein about an inch and a half 
from the top. Paint the roses with Rose for the first firing 
and suggest the leaves and background with Yellow Brown 
and Brown Green, keeping all light and soft. Paint the base 
of the stein black using any good powder black. Apply as 
eventy as possible stippling if necessary. Paint narrow band 
and handle in gold. 
For the second firing, strengthen the light roses with a 
suggestion of American Beauty, and paint the dark rose with 
this same color, with a touch of Ruby in center. Accent the 
leaves with the same greens used in the first painting, and again 
apply the black paint to the lower part of stein. Let this 
dry until it is ready for dusting. If painted in the afternoon 
it should be ready to dust the next morning, then powder 
evenly with the black used in painting. 
Again apply gold and fire. Add detail to flowers in third 
fire if necessary 
If* «f 
DIFFICULTIES WE CAN OVERCOME IN THE USE OF 
LUSTRES 
Fanny Roivell 
"How can we use lustres so we get the finished result 
without spots ? ' ' 
Dry the lustres immediately after they are placed on 
the china, and manage your work so you may avoid dust. 
Half dry lustres are as ready to collect dust as the oils we 
use with mineral colors. Though the work may go into the 
kiln looking all right, every particle of dust that has rested 
on the lustre develops a mark that looks like the prick of a 
pin. Dust is much more disastrous to lustres than to 
mineral paints. Countless pin pricks dotted over a surface 
are as tantalizing a difficulty as we are likely to meet with 
in lustres, and what to do with it is most perplexing to 
the beginner, who cannot imagine how they came there. 
Dry the lustres so there may be no wet surfaces to 
attract the dust. You may reply that it dries too quickly 
anyway. It certainly does dry so a tint cannot be padded 
further, a very few moments after it has been placed, but 
it is not positively hard and dry. If you touch it you will 
find it is slightly sticky. It will remain so for hours. It 
must be firmly dry immediately if you expect to have fine 
results. Whether it has been tinted or merely painted on, 
dry in an oven that is near the work, and an oven that may 
be lifted on and off a gas stove is better than a stationery 
one that is used for other purposes. The top of the oven 
must be ventilated so steam may escape. It is not sufiicient 
ventilation to leave the door open. As steam rises, if it 
does not find a way to escape, it falls back on the china, and 
wherever lustre is, makes tiny spots, and so many of them, 
countless as the stars are on a cold clear winter's night. 
These bits of moisture may also dash back in a kiln, if it is 
not sufficiently ventilated to allow escape. 
Usually in a kiln there is, at any rate, a great deal of 
moisture from colors and golds, just as the heat begins to 
come you can see the moisture escaping from the air valve. 
If it were kept in you can imagine how sadly it would spoil 
your plans as to the development of perfect lustres. 
The reason why we like a portable stove is that after the 
lustre has been dried the oven may be lifted off for the 
china to cool, and the work not removed until it is cool 
enough to handle carefully. Pulling hot china out of an 
oven is apt to mar it, and there is also a risk of breaking the 
china by suddenly bringing it into contact with cool air. 
But a stationery gas oven may be used by turning off the 
gas and letting the china cool. 
An oven in the studio is useful too in drying gold or 
partially drying work that is to be grounded. I make a 
point to tell the way to use an oven because I have seen 
people go about it in such odd ways. Take for instance 
the handling of a plate that has a fresh lustre border. Push 
it into the oven and pull it out again, with the help of a 
paint rag, and you will probably find that you have pressed 
against the surface, and that the lustres stick. You cannot 
handle hot lustres any more than wet lustres, for until the 
china is cool the lustre is moist. But as the china cools the 
lustres become as hard as a rock. Do not make too hard 
work of doing all this, just use good practical common 
sense in the way you handle china and the way you dry the 
lustres. The intelligent comprehension of deftness, and 
extreme neatness conquer the chief difficulty of handling 
lustres. 
Be direct in the way you place lustres. Your china is to 
be perfectly clean, of course, before you begin, and you know 
just where in the design you want to put certain lustres. 
Have the bottles in holes in a box, or in some other way, 
very firm so they will not tip over at a crucial moment. A 
block of wood with holes cut the size, of the lustre bottles is 
the best kind of case to hold your equipment of lustres. 
Use a large flat sable brush for laying on borders or large 
surfaces. You are to lay on the wash rapidly so it will 
scarcely dry while you go round a border and edges may meet 
and combine without a rough line of heavier color. If you 
are very deliberate it will never do, and if you go over it, 
