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.
Ok, so I hadn’t set out to make invisible seated monks, but what I had been working at failed to materialize, and in trying to salvage it, I ended up with these little guys. The first one on the left was a mistake, the rest were sort of on purpose.
What these turned into, at least in my mind, are flower vases. They can stand as is, or with a ring installed, could be hung on the wall. Also, they can be made in various sizes from very small to very large (IT buzzword “scalable”), and will be easy to fire because they stand up by themselves.
I’m kind of interested to see what those cracks will do in the firing.
Every once in a while, I find myself flipping through some of my old pueblo pottery books and without fail I end up obsessing on this one geometric design motif. I’m not sure what it is supposed to be, but for me it is lightning. I don’t know why, but I really like it. Unfortunately, it doesn’t fit into the Karatsu tradition all that easily. However, starting today I decided to start doodling with this motif until I come up with something suitable to work into my pots.
This last trip to Korea gave me a lot to think about regarding carving and inlay. There were a couple of boxes I’d made a few days back, and these are going to be experiments with inlay and aforementioned motif. The carving is not great, but it’s a start. The way that the slip fills in the rough cuts to create soft curves is very interesting to me, and the feeling of scraping away the surface of the piece to reveal the inlay design is surprisingly satisfying. Since the claybody on these boxes is porcelain, the normally white slip has some benigara (RIO) mixed in to make it red.
This box will probably get fired in a saggar with charcoal and a feldspar/soda ash glaze. Will post pics of the finished piece if it makes it through the firing, and it is not too embarrassing.
The pizza oven is finally finished! Not quite dry yet, but that will happen. The last bit of work involves uncovering the oven, letting it dry out, and paddling it to compress the clay. This helps keep the cracks smaller and the clay to be more dense (better heat retention, less insulating).
Before firing it the first time, we will use a scraper and brush on the floor to get the little bumps and grit knocked off, then it will be good to go…
Will keep you posted on how the oven holds up over the next few years.
I just got back from a fantastic trip to Korea. Spent one week at the Gangjin Celadon Festival as a guest artist, and got to attend several really great workshops by very talented potters. There were 15 guest artists in attendance from Australia, Israel, Germany, Sweden, the US, and Japan. A really fun bunch.
Workshops were conducted by 3 contemporary ceramic artists, one teabowl artist, one traditional Onggi potter, and one contemporary Onggi potter. I took many hours of video, and will post them to the video page at karatsupots.com once they are edited down.
I did get a few still pictures with my phone camera:
Well, I wasn’t expecting this to happen, but the pizza kiln has turned into a fetish kiln, at least for the time being. Actually, budget fetish, since I couldn’t afford a nice black latex wrap…
Here’s what happened: We finally got the end of rainy season, and have been out working in the yard, finishing up various projects. I saw rain in the forecast for the next few days and decided to get the kiln finished and covered. Oh, and also the big pile of cob I have under the double tarp is starting to get stiffer from the sun, in spite of the good covering.
After digging into the pile of cob I found out that only the very top is getting stiffer, but I had started the job and decided to get something accomplished. After laying in the first 30cm or so, everything started to sag and the more I pushed it up, the more it would sag back down. Pretty soft. Well, I remembered I have a left over roll of plastic used to wrap palettes to keep the stacks from falling apart when the forklift manhandles them. So, I wrapped up the kiln starting with the base and working my way up over the cob. It really worked like a charm, and I was even able to push the material up and have it stay there, because the wrap is under quite a bit of tension. It is not very strong though, so what you see in the pictures is about 7 layers of wrap over the cob. Quite strong in layers.
I expect that the brick will absorb some water from the cob, and the summer heat will help some of that water out of the mix, making it stiff enough to start paddling in the next few days. If we paddle everything and get it nice and compressed over the course of the next few weeks, the worst of the cracking can be avoided. All that is left after that is to decide whether to leave it a simple dome, or add some sort of decorative motif. Oh, and bake pizza and bread.
