Congratulations to Becky Mader-Blakeslee!  She won the test kiln from my latest contest!

I have added four new classes to my 2015 schedule!  All of them in my home studio, in Johns Creek, GA (Metro Atlanta area).  Also, several of my 2016 classes at the Campbell Folkschool are now open for enrollment.  

Also in this issue, I've got a cool little trick that will help you decipher Thompson Enamel stock numbers.   It makes choosing colors so much easier!

Pam

by Pam East

So far as I know, Thompson Enamel is the only company with an intelligently thought out stock numbering system.  It might not seem so at first glance, but crack the code and you'll never be guessing at your colors again.  

For the purposes of this article I'm going to focus only on Thompson's 1000 and 2000 series enamels for Copper, Silver and Gold; however, the same system applies to their other lines of enamel.  

Each color is assigned a four digit number, and each digit carries with it specific information.  

___ ___ ___ ___

  A    B    C    D

Position A identifies if the color is opaque or transparent.  Any color starting with a "1" is opaque. Any color starting with a "2" is transparent.  There's a neat little mnemonic you can use to remember this.  The words "Opaque" and "One" both start with "O".  The words "Transparent" and "Two" both start with "T".   

Position B identifies the color family.  For example "3" denotes green and "6" denotes blue.  That means every color starting with 23 is going to be a transparent green.  This can be very helpful when putting together shading sets.  You can see at a glance if they are complementary or not.  

Positions C and D should be treated as a single two-digit number and denote color intensity.  The lower the number, the lighter the color. The higher the number, the darker the color.  

With this information, I can take one look at 2680 and know immediately that it's Transparent (2) Blue (6) and very dark (80).  It is, in fact, Prussian blue.   

There is the odd exception to the rules here and there.  For example, any number ending in "00"  or "01" is opalescent rather than transparent.  

Here's a handy list of the color families for you.  This would represent position "B"

Opaque 0 - White 1 - Brown 2 - Beige / Light Yellow 3 - Green 4 - Blue Green 5 - Green Blue 6 - Blue 7 - Pink / Purple 8 - Yellow / Orange / Red 9 - Gray / Black

Transparent 0 - Clear 1 - Beige / Brown 2 - Yellow / Green Yellow 3 - Green 4 - Blue Green 5 - Green Blue 6 - Blue 7 - Purple 8 - Pink / Red / Orange 9 - Gray

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