After glazing the nymph and the cloud-band parts of my porcelain sculpture, I did another kiln firing for the gold luster. Gold luster needs to be painted on a surface that has already been fired with a shiny glaze, and it fires at a relatively lower temperature than the other glazes, so it needs to go in a separate kiln. I painted gold luster on the nymph crown. Before firing, the luster looks blood-red (which means it’s the high-quality stuff!).

While I was painting luster, I also painted the gold dots on one of my pool sculptures that I am saving for when I continue making more figures for that sculpture.

It’s still fascinating to me how the precious metal changes during the firing process and turns gold—it is always the best kind of kiln to open and see the results.

I also painted some luster on the porcelain cloud-bands. Instead of gold, this was my first time trying a “mother-of-pearl” luster, which I wanted to paint on the edges of the cloud-bands. I was thinking of the way that sunlight behind clouds sometimes makes an iridescent halo on the edges of the clouds. Similarly to how the gold luster is red before firing, this luster is actually blue before firing, and it needs to be painted on with a very thin coat (so that it appears light blue). If it’s painted on too thick, it will turn out too dark, more gray than a pale iridescent.

Since lusters give off some very unpleasant/unhealthy vapors while painting, all this work was done under a heavy-duty ventilation hood in the studio and wearing my vapor respirator mask (pictured here realizing painting this was going to take twice as long as I anticipated…)

It ended up being worth the trouble though…

Now… what about this thing?

Well, there were also some pieces that were supposed to be for this, in my luster firing, but they are not pictured… yet. They didn’t turn out quite right this time so this part has gotten slightly delayed. (I suppose it’s fitting that one of the most difficult-to-identify objects in the Voynich would also cause some unexpected technical difficulties in sculpting), but this will be my next update soon….