Wax on, wax off

So my pieces had been fired, but were still missing a certain je-ne-sais-quoi, a certain shine. Watkins and Wandless suggested paste wax, but I didn't know what that was, but my father said it was the kind of stuff they use to wax cars - turtle wax. Now I looked up turtle wax and let me tell you it has nothing to do with either wax or turtles, for better or for worse. The main thing is being a born-and-bred Ithacan, so green that I am practically photosynthetic, I didn't want it on my pieces.

I therefore went to GreenStar which is a wonderful place and purchased a 100% beeswax candle. I rubbed the sides of this candle on the outside of my pieces, so that it looked like this.

This was not the look I had hoped for and for a while I was at a loss, but then it came to me to polish the wax with a cloth, which I am sure has been the obvious solution to you from the start, but I learn as I go. 

Anyway, it worked: 

Here's another:

The blacks in particular got richer and deeper and shone almost like basalt. All the colors became deeper. They're almost hypnotic, if you look at them too long. And the smoky patterns are like Rorschach tests; everybody sees something different in them. (Unfortunately the red that is visible above is a reflection from a red box near the pieces, and not a color on the pieces themselves. But you can see at least that they have high albedo.)

The waxing was pretty difficult to do, physically; it required a lot of elbow grease. I like the fact that it's local beeswax, though; it goes with the whole from-the-earth/from-my-home aspect of my project. All the materials I burned I found in my woods, except the newspaper, but that was recycling anyway. The clay they're made from is just clay, pure untreated earth, such as you can dig right out of the ground. The copper wire, the only foreign material, is pure copper, which is a naturally occurring element. The salt, likewise, is a naturally occurring compound, and I love that.