CiM 429 Tortoise

“The master was an old Turtle--we used to call him Tortoise--'

Why did you call him Tortoise, if he wasn't one?' Alice asked.

We called him Tortoise because he taught us,' said the Mock Turtle angrily; 'really you are very dull!'

You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,' added the Gryphon; and then they both sat silent and looked at poor Alice, who felt ready to sink into the earth.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking-Glass

CiM's new Tortoise is one of the more interesting colours I've gotten to play with in a while. It reminds me strongly of Effetre's Copper Green in it's reactions, but without the tendency to the dull leaden coating.

On the right you can see the end of the cooled, melted rod, showing a soft green,  pale blue, and purple shading to brown.

So right off the bat - you know you are going to have some fun with this one!



 In fact - the first thing I start thinking is how much this colour reminds me of Effetre 219 Copper Green.

So, harkening back to "what do we do with copper green" - why, I tried some dots of EDP, of course! And yep - they do look a lot like EDP on Copper Green. Above, on mandrel, still hot, before kilning, and below, annealed. That's just a base of tortoise, with dots of EDP (Effectre 254 - Evil Devitrifying Purple) on it, melted in. Nothing else.

 And here, we have a poor little self-coloured spacer that got cold and cracked. Note the rainbow of colours inside!

 This is tortoise with clear dots, not melted in. Note the tortoise is lighter, less streaky, and less interesting under clear.

 Tortoise with ivory dots.

 Two self-coloured spacers. Quite a difference, eh?

 Same two, from the other side.

 And finally, with dark turquoise dots.

 As you can see from CiM's page on tortoise, this glass has lots of potential to, er, "taught us" new stuff.

I like the organic colour of it (despite not being a big fan of opaque green), and look forward to playing with this one. It's quite extraordinary to watch when hot - it goes white after being heated to red hot, then cools to blue / grey, and then eventually goes green. It will strike back to green in the kiln, even if you put it in the kiln still white.