Everything went fine, pot was bisqued and set back on the shelf, testers fired in the same load were then glazed with several choices of white.
They were all ok, but not exactly right. So, I tried a few more glazes on the testers that were left. Still not right. Ahhh, ok, so I built another round of testers, bringing the number up to an even dozen. Meanwhile, in the middle of all this, the customer ordered 3 more (smaller) pots but in a white clay this time with a white glaze. On the gray clay, I tried a few MORE glazes. And yep, you guessed it, still not really there, although one is close. So, on to yet another batch of testers, using glaze variations of the one color that was close... erm, yeah. No. Those won't work.
SO, finally, the customer decides to go with a satin white I used on the 3 smaller pots.
Well, all the glaze options that I have that are white... go gray on this gray clay. So I tried something a bit over the edge, and landed on my face. In a rush to get this one done and out the door, I put a coat of a white engobe (which is just a fancy sort of clay slip) with the satin white over without doing any testers. Well, it did some really funky things that WILL work, for something, just not for what the customer wants. The white engobe obviously shrunk more than the clay of the pot, and flaked off in a few areas showing the clay underneath in a pretty strange way.
So its back to the drawing board. I'm going to remake this pot, in a white clay this time that will look nice under the satin white giving the final pot a nice slightly warm white. Meanwhile, I'm going to take the scaly pot with all its crackly bits and put another glaze over it, possibly a brown, maybe a green, and rub it into the cracks and over the surface. This pot SHOULD turn out looking like a wonderful antique piece with tons of character!