Well, last weekend’s firing is now unloaded and most everything turned out well. It was all for a wedding, so always good not to have to do it all over again…
Before and after pictures:
Loaded and ready to go…
Finished katakuchi, about 25cm wide.
interior detail
Next are some teabowls for the next wood firing. Made from some really gnarly clay, I had high hopes for trimming these…..until I forgot about them and they dried out too much to trim! Dag’nabit!
teabowls
Guinomi
Have a great week!
Sorry to everyone for the lack of posting lately, particularly pictures of results from the last firing. I’ve been taking photos, but keep having to scrap them because the color is all over the place. When I did the remodel of the workshop it totally screwed up the ambient light on the 2nd floor. That, combined with me moving my photo setup downstairs, and my white balance is completely out of whack. So, I will post finished work when I get that all sorted out. It’s looking like I’ll have to move the photo setup back upstairs and go back to dedicated lighting of one type only (at this point all you photographers are thinking “no shit, Sherlock”, no doubt.)
Anyway… back to the slabfest thing. After finishing a lot of pots for a wedding order, I started thinking about slabs, and the fact that I finally figured out how to make them without having them all crack during either drying and/or firing. So this next firing will include thicker and larger slab plates, and also one experimental interlocking slab wall hanging that will be about 5 ft. tall.
Lately, all my slabs are made by slapping a piece of clay out on the floor until it is the desired thickness. After that, I get them onto a board and paddle the bejeezus out of them. Lastly, the edges get compressed with a damp chamois. On one of my dog walks a couple of years ago, I found an old rusty sickle which I hammered into a curve and now use to facet and flute different pieces. It also works great on these slabs.
smaller slabs all finished and now drying
edge detail. gouged with a piece of rough pine and smoothed over with a chamois and hands.
surface carved to look like tortoiseshell bamboo.
simple fluting
These three do not have raised edges, since they are meant to be a wall hanging.
one of three interlocking slabs.
they will be held together with wooden butterfly keys
all three will have iron underglaze brush decoration with traditional motifs.
36cm square slab, same size as the others above. This one will be for food, so the edges are raised, and smoothed.
detail of rim and fluted surface
tabula rasa. I haven’t decided what to do with this yet. It is double the size of the others, 10kg of clay.
Still working on making pots in between a sudden flurry of activities I hadn’t planned on. Isn’t that how it always works? The pots from last week are all dry and ready to be glazed, so I’m in the middle of doing the underglaze deco on them. Hopefully I can finish that up and get them all glazed tomorrow. Then start loading the kiln with them to free up shelf space for more pots.
In the pictures today are some larger versions of the small ovals from last week. The top two ware boards are medium sized ovals thrown off of the hump. The lower shelf is ovals made from individual 2kg balls. The big round one was a 3kg ball, and is about 34cm in diameter. The decorated pots are the round dishes, and the shoe shaped (kutsugata) dishes. They will all be glazed while green and once fired.
Still trying to figure out how to draw a good bird, and had fun experimenting with the various brush strokes for making the wings and body. So many variations for all the body parts. Tried very hard to do all of the strokes as quickly as possible, to keep them looking fresh. Far from being skilled at this yet, but feel that I have taken a step or two in the right direction.
One of the things I’ve not done very much of is Japanese tableware. Well, I’ve done some, but never really had a good idea of what to make, because I had no knowledge of dish types and acceptable sizes. So, if someone liked a food dish, it was usually a very common shape and size.
Last week, my mentor lent me his 15+ volume encyclopedia of Japanese food dishes. You would not believe all of the recognized dish types and sizes, all divided into which season they would be used in. And they are all shown with full color photos of food in them, to give one an idea of how they are used. Looking through all of this just blew my mind. So much variety, but at the same time fairly specific size requirements.
Anyway, now that I have the big kiln, there is much more room for various dishes to be fired, so I’m going for it. Today, I continued the work I started yesterday, finishing out that clay with the round dishes. Today, I prepared some different clay and made some spouted bowls (actually food dishes) and some kutsugata (shoe shaped, not sure I understand origin of this term) food dishes.
Here are the pots from yesterday, trimmed. The hump wasn’t finished when I was summoned for dinner, so I left it overnight to use as a trimming chuck this morning. This clay is full of sand and not very plastic, so doesn’t stick to itself too badly if one of the surfaces is not wet.
After trimming that group, the hump could be used to throw some more pots; I think I got another 8 or 9 small plates out of it.
Like I mentioned above, this clay has a lot of fine sand wedged in, and it trims real nice. Lots of crinkles.
Started making pots for the wood kiln today, after spending some time making a list of what needed making, and working on some sketches and sizing.
These are the beginning of the first items on the list, I wanted to get more done but spent much of the day cleaning up the studio after the gas kiln unloading. This is a very typical Karatsu shape, and you see them from very small all the way up to very large. These are 19cm and 16cm sizes. As you can see from the pictures most of these plates will probably get brush deco and feldspar glaze (cone 6, give or take), some others will get rice straw ash glaze (cone 11, give or take)
