A pot only a potter can love…

This last wood kiln firing was a real disaster. All of my large pieces cracked or collapsed completely, and all of the smaller work ended up under-fired badly. The upside to this is that they can all be refired, and I just finished the 2nd of 3 refire loads in the gas kiln this morning.

From the first refire load, my favorite pot is a porcelain teabowl glazed with rice straw ash glaze. I don’t normally work in porcelain, but in my search for bodies that vitrify a little better than the local clays, I’ve started using partly or mostly porcelain in some of my work. This particular bowl is porcelain with as much feldspar sandstone mixed in as I could manage, and still have it wedge-able.

In the wood firing it was in a spot that got a lot of fly ash, and in fact a lot of flaky ash collected inside the bowl. Making sure not to dump this, I saved it for the gas kiln and fired it to cone 11 flat. All of that ash melted really nicely, mixing with the rice straw ash glaze for some nice color.

There are several bloats on the interior, but none really fragile or severe. These bloats and the blues and greens on the interior really remind me of some the old Karatsu bowls with their warty bloated surfaces and subtle coloring of fly ash on rice straw ash glaze. Another nice thing about this pot: the fire color from the wood kiln was not lost in the gas firing. There is a nice gold luster on the  melted surface of the bare porcelain body.

Second Chamber Loaded

Loading the second chamber took less time than expected, just one day. It’s not very full this time, just sake and tea cups mostly, and about half of those are glaze tests. Everything is low temp work, and should mature at around cone 6.


-Posted from iMike

Location:Taku

Bummer…

This just made me sad when I saw it this morning. We had a LOT of rain over ten last 36 hours, and I think the footers sank a bit, tilting the stack forward, then dumping it. This will take some time to clean up.

** Just one quick amendment to this post: on re-reading the post and comments, I realized that I may have mislead people to believe that the stack (chimney) went over. Not so, thankfully. Just the stack of wood. No damage to the kiln other than a few scratches to the insulating top coat, and about 5 unlucky shelves that had been sitting right where the wood struck.


-Posted from iMike

Location:Taku, Saga, Japan

Hosui Sato Workshop

This last Sunday, I had the opportunity to attend a short calligraphy workshop conducted by calligrapher/teacher Hosui Sato. I first met him last month when he attended the Workshop in Taku 2012. During the evening pizza party, he did an impromptu calligraphy performance for everyone, doing brushwork on paper, clay, and finally even a large work (which now hangs in my studio) on a tatami mat, using a big fat brush.


The group of participants was comprised of the Wakate Shokunin (young craftsmen/women) group of Omura, and I was invited as a guest. In the next picture, one of the participants is signing the group work, with Hosui san (sitting) looking on. Members for the evening included a woodworker, two potters, a silversmith, and a graphic designer.


Here are the two pieces I completed during the event. The first is RASHIKU (等志駆). First kanji means equal, second means intention, third means run. A rough translation would be ‘to apply yourself equally vigorously in all endeavors’.
The second piece is KAISHIN (魁心). First kanji means pioneer, second means heart. The first is actually the kanji for my eldest sons name, and I am thinking about using Kaishin as the name of the first chamber of the wood kiln, and naming the second chamber using kanji from my younger son’s name.


That’s about it for today, have a good evening!

-Posted from iMike

Location:Omura, Nagasaki

WIT 2012: Okamoto Sakurei

During the fourth and fifth days of the Workshop in Taku 2012: The Simple Teabowl, we were treated to pottery demonstrations by Okamoto Sakurei. He made a variety of items for us using a variety of techniques. On the afternoon of day four, we visited his studio and showroom and he honored us by allowing us to view some of the older pots in his personal collection. Breathtaking Korean bowls, and a couple of Japanese bowls. They were just amazing to hold (and maybe a little bit of fondling happened too, but mum’s the word).

Big Pot

This is the first of some large pots I would like to start working on. This one is slab and paddle work, a garden lantern. It includes holes in both sections so that an electrical line can be run, if the user prefers a light bulb to a flame. This is a test piece of sorts, it will be fired just to see how it reacts to the kiln, then I can start planning other pieces. The piece is about 140 cm tall, and probably about 20kg.


-Posted from iMike