Next are some photos from the front room:

Well, we wrapped up the show last night at 6 pm, and headed out for a nice dinner and some beer, stopping on the way at Homura, the best pottery gallery in Karatsu. Not good to go in there with a wad of cash in your pocket, you won’t escape undamaged. I did the next best thing by only dropping $50 on a really nice little teabowl that I coudn’t believe was priced that low.

Here are some pics from the show starting from the entry way, with 3 pieces: my big Chosen Karatsu jar, a collaborative piece (an incense burner), and Nakayama kun’s long wallet, made of Bison.

Sorry the wallet is not too visible. The burner is yohen yakishime and the lid is fumed silver with a lotus motif. The flower is the knob, the leaves incised, and the empty seed pods are the air holes. Isn’t it a beaut?

Finally fired the big jar. It was a bugger to glaze by myself, I need to figure out a system for these.

 When I peeked in the kiln, I was worried, because the whole thing was listing to one side, but luckily it wasn’t stuck to the back wall of the kiln. The flat bottom had sagged a bit on one side onto the shells. Luckily it didn’t cause any ruptures in the sides of the pot.

Where it did sag a bit was around the shoulder, not too much, but made the lip of the pot warp some. Not sure if I like this or not. Some people might like the movement, and a lot of large jars often have this feature/problem. I think I would have preferred it un-warped myself.  The sag happened exactly where it happened on the wheel when I was finishing the rim. I fixed it at the time, but it came back anyway. Something to remember.

The glaze turned out ok, but far from ideal. The ame ran so much that it pulled the white down, stretching it too thin, and I lost much of the fine runs with the blues. The best runs came at the front of the pot, pictured.  (Sorry for the crappy pictures, I’ll photo the load properly and post as they get done.)  Final dims of the pot are 40cm tall X 33cm wide. Weight: 4kg/10lbs even.

I’ve been continuing excavation of the front area of the kiln, preparing it for the kiln building workshop in October. About 10 inches down, there’s a seam of clay that runs through our whole yard, and this gives me a good excuse to collect some for making pots. I posted text and pictures to the kiln workshop blog already, so I’ll just link to it from here:

http://karatsupots-workshop.blogspot.com/

Here are a few pics of guinomi, 3 with regular rice straw white, and one with the Amakusa subbed rice straw white. With the Amakusa it is quite a bit more refractory. Totally different look, with more subtle mottled blues where the thickness is right.

This is my favorite cup of the firing, actually there are 8 of them. Experimented with a new type of Madara glaze (subbed Amakusa porcelain stone for Kamado Feldspar). Makes for a more matte surface that interacts a bit differently with the Ame glaze. It’s three glazes, 2 types of Ame and the new Madara.