Jeff's Red

I went to this great workshop last June at Bailey Ceramics featuring John Britt and Jim Bailey. When we arrived we were created with buckets of pre-mixed glazes (this potter's dream!) and were allowed to glaze about 6 pieces each. They were all fired to cone 10 in reduction. This was my introduction to Jeff's Red (see John Britt's book).  You can also read this nice article on Jeff's Red, written by John Britt.

  

drama and pizazz!

The glaze was very cool and I promptly came home to make a batch of my own! However, although also firing to cone 10 in reduction, my batch turned out to look like this:

ho hum....boring :(

I was so disappointed. The pink bowls hung around laughing at me on the shelf until one day while loading my electric kiln for a glaze firing I thought I'd throw in one of the pink bowls to see what would happen....and look at what happened!! 

Oh la la!!

On the left, Oh La La- on the right, ho hum...!

So, my question is- should I fire pots with this glaze as a routine- once in reduction and then in oxidation!? Should I make this color an exclusive line to glam up the price?! It seems indulgent to twice fire them, but I really love the effect.

Isn't it amazing how colorants struggle back and forth depending on the atmosphere?  A perfect solution would be to figure out a way to get this effect in my reduction firing without all the extra expense, but I fear that requires a level of understanding and glaze fiddling beyond my ability right now.

Your thoughts? Any experience with this type of thing? 

Thanks in advance for any comments you might have~

John Britt and Jim Bailey