Picture 041

This is the largest of the recent batch. It was intended to be a stormy planet, with swirls of MOP blue and MOP white. But the MOP glass started burning, so I desperately encased the whole thing, raising its diameter up quite a bit. Though I tried to keep the marble surface warm rather than hot, the encasing still displaced the surface slightly, producing slight but obnoxious ridges. How I wished I had a crucible kiln. If I had advanced technology, or if my encasing technique were better, this might have been a very good piece. As it is, with the ridges and small bubbles, it's pretty in colour but definitely a "second".