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.
stacked, trimmed pots drying w/ new pots below.
throwing on the hump again after finishing trimming. mirror in background to view pot profile.
detail of trimmed foot showing chirimenjiwa (‘crepe’ crinkly surface)
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)
Or maybe one of these, though that brushwork is far beyond my meager skills.
Some other things from the last firing included teabowls, sign post caps, katakuchi, and a lot of hammer fodder. Been having problems with my Chosen karatsu lately, the ame-yu is not playing nicely like it should, and this firing for the first time ever, I ended up with pinholing in my regular madara-yu. This is usually a very dependable glaze for me so I am kind of mystified and perplexed. The only difference from the usual was the clay, so I’ll start diagnosing the problem from there.
a pile of severely pinholed katakuchi
also some chosen karatsu bowls that didn’t run well, or ran too much.
sign post cap rice straw ash glaze over iron glaze.
sign post cap rice straw ash glaze over iron glaze.
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.
Pieces packed with soda soaked straw and charcoal
incense burners after firing
unwarped incense burner body w/charcoal and soda effects
burner bottom
inside view
burner which was side fired on shells
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?
ring boxes with soda and feldspar soaked rope
after firing. they all cracked badly (shattered really). oh well, win some lose some…
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.
iron saturate glazed bowl in saggar.
iron saturate glaze, with smoke corona. the charcoal was not even remotely round, but this corona is a perfect curve.
the glaze on the back of the pot
detail of the corona border area, I think the grey matte surface is iron micro crystals.
There was a bit of an issue with crawling over one of my clay bodies, when raw glazed. The guinomi toward the front of the kiln had this problem, but melted enough to look interesting. These bowls at the back just look dangerous. I left them after the last firing, but finally got them out yesterday and had a nice cathartic smash fest.
How do you know your kiln is a luxury model? When you built it/had it built, did you really think of everything? How do you know that you have THE KILN that shows everyone you are a winner? a behemoth in the clay world? a demigod of ceramic art? Why, cup-holders, of course.
it even keeps your beverages hot…. 3 to 5 times a year.
