Jasper Trials Finished

Well, almost finished, I still have to slide the glass in and hang it on the wall. 

This now has the painted number, the paper labels and pencil numbering. Everything I could see on the original. The colours aren't 100% correct, but that's almost impossible from photos.

Jasper Trial Trial

Of course, in the process of making a jasper trial tray it is necessary to perform some trials in order to test various ways of making things. So, you end up with several trial pieces for different trials in the tray you are reproducing. And what do you do with these trials?

You build a trial trial tray.

These trial pieces have some of the writing that is on the original pieces (the Wedgwood museum was kind enough to send me a high resolution picture of the tray so I can determine what the text says for all pieces). I trialled different ways to write the text.
The numbers are stamped with number punches from a 5mm set ( I have ordered a 6mm set as these numbers are too small for the full size trials).
The colours are not correct in these pieces, colour is difficult to reproduce accurately, anyway.

The box for the tray is a trial, too, this is what the full size box will look like, stained this colour too.

 

Wedgwood Jasper Trial Tray

We went to the Wedgwood museum a year or two ago and one of the exhibits caught my eye. It was a tray of jasper trials. Wedgwood made thousands of trials of different recipes of jasper in order to perfect the properties and colour of his jasper ceramic. Some of these trial pieces have been collected and arranged in a tray in one of the cabinets at the museum.There's a few photos of the tray around the web, like here:

http://www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk/collections/collections-online/object/tray-of-jasper-trials/from_search

Rather than get a poster, I decided to create a replica of the tray. The tray itself wouldn't be a problem, a simple wooden ray will do, stained to match the original.

Polymer clay can be mixed to match the colours fairly well, so far the sample pieces are matching quite well:

The next stage is to stamp the trial numbers on each piece, and then add the extra details of handwritten labels etc. I've bought some larger number stamps, my current set is too small at 5mm.

After that I'll make a tray and then mount the pieces in the tray.