People sometimes lament the limited effects possible in gas and electric kilns compared to wood kilns, but there are ways to get many interesting effects in gas and electric if you use your imagination and do some experimentation.
This time around I loaded about half of the kiln with saggared ware. 4 incense burners, 3 sake cup refires, 2 boxes, 2 teabowls, and 1 frog toilet (in porcelain, no less).
The incense burners came out most interesting, with a lot of deformation occurring in the clay, which was the goal. Nakayama kun wanted some burner bodies that were deformed and all around ‘grungy’ to fit with silver lids. They were wrapped in rice straw rope that had been soaked in a saturated solution of soda ash, mixed with some feldspar, the idea being to get some focused area effects on the pot surfaces. The soda ate into the clay in places and fluxed the feldspar nicely. One of the burners completely collapsed and stuck to the saggar and the adjacent burner, but I’ll be able to keep 2 out of the 3.
Two of the teabowls, with iron based glazes turned out nicely, but one (the black one) stuck to the saggar and will need some repair on the lip. Nakayama kun is going to do a silver repair on the lip, and I’ll post a picture when it is done. The other, and iron saturate glazed bowl, turned out nicely but I really can’t decide if I like the glaze color or not. Need to whip up some tea in it to see if it shows off the tea color well or not.
The porcelain ring boxes were a complete failure, with cooling fractures I think. I drizzled in a soda/spar slurry on the insides and it was waaay too thick. I think its expansion and/or contraction fractured the pots.
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- Pieces packed with soda soaked straw and charcoal
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- incense burners after firing
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- unwarped incense burner body w/charcoal and soda effects
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- burner bottom
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- inside view
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- burner which was side fired on shells
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- lip detail. the ash dripped here in a dark green pool. I don’t know what the little white wormlike things are. some look like they dripped from above. Maybe excess silica from the straw rope?
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- ring boxes with soda and feldspar soaked rope
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- after firing. they all cracked badly (shattered really). oh well, win some lose some…
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- ame yu bowl saggar fired with charcoal. too bad this one tipped into the wall and melted on. had to break off some of the lip to remove it. will post a finished picture of this one after it is repaired.
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- iron saturate glazed bowl in saggar.
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- iron saturate glaze, with smoke corona. the charcoal was not even remotely round, but this corona is a perfect curve.
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- the glaze on the back of the pot
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- detail of the corona border area, I think the grey matte surface is iron micro crystals.
