With the wood kiln and trying to fill it, there is not nearly enough shelf space (or ware boards) in the studio. My neighbor has a small grove of bamboo up the hill, and gave me permission to cut down a few for building a ware board frame. Here in the pictures it is mostly finished, but still needs about 2 more tiers added higher up.
I moved most of the new pots out here, and it freed up all kinds of space in the studio, but there is still a shortage of ware boards. Cheap plywood is still about $10 per sheet, but it looks like I’ll have to bite the bullet and buy some soon.
The oval dishes are the next run of food dishes. They look really good with Chosen Karatsu glazing, and also with iron brush deco under a feldspar glaze. The clay is a new one I’m experimenting with, bought from a clay specialist, but after trimming these I don’t think I’ll use this again, at least unaltered. Wedging in some sand might perk things up a bit, but the basic clay body is pretty boring by itself. We’ll see, it might have really great color in the wood kiln and that makes up for a lot.
I had a lump of left over sandy clay that I wedged in near the end of the run. From the looks of some of the trimmed feet, I could have done a better job…
Oval dish trimmed foot, badly wedged clay.
Trimmed foot, all smooth clay.
Top view
Front view of dish, untrimmed.
Oval food dishes, thrown on the wheel and altered.
It just didn’t look right until there were some pots perched up there…
The other day I posted pics of a low table I designed for easy breakdown/setup and transport. Here is the tall version of that table. It uses the parts from the low table, the low table top as the high stretcher and the low stretcher as the high table top. 60 x 90cm leg pieces were added from another sheet of plywood.
After assembling, the table is quite stable, though it does rock a bit because of the plywood thickness. In spite of the rocking, it is very hard to unbalance.
Fully assembled table. ‘V’ stretcher from low table opened and acting as table top here.
Detail of leg, stretcher, and top.
two legs, with low table top acting as stretcher for the high table.
Leg of high table, 60 x 90cm plywood with 45cm slit
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.
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.
The kiln is finished. Yep, you heard right. Done. I can hardly believe it myself.
Cleaning up the front area and getting the concrete in was the last job, and it is done. Now, working on the kiln will consist of playing with the flue dimensions and firing it, something I am looking forward to, and have started getting work ready for the upcoming October firing.
I pulled the forms off this morning and cleaned up the concrete. The sump form had collapsed under the weight of the concrete, so I didn’t get the nice oval I was aiming for, and I had to go in with a hammer drill and concrete bit to clean out some of the concrete that had encroached into the sump area. It was still not quite cured, so not too difficult to break up.
Though I imagine water will still rise in the mouth of the kiln, it won’t be dirty runoff, and the walls of the stoking area will not be eroding every time we get rain. Once I get my hands on an automatic sump pump, I’ll be able to cover the sump and forget about it. Yay!
Actually, looking at the front area again, if we could think of a way to create a waterproof wall across the front of the kiln, we could have the first kiln heated jacuzzi. In fact, we could probably ‘soak and stoke’, relaxing in the hot tub while simultaneously firing the kiln to cone 13.
The concrete truck delivered 1.6 yards of concrete today, and it was a happy thing. I think this will finally solve most of the flooding problem when the heavy rains come, though the water will still probably come up from underneath. So, the sump was left in, and an automated pump will be installed. Best of all, no more muddy mess when firing the kiln!
The truck came at 8:30 and we finished up just before 11:00. The forms held up well with just one shifting a bit. The biggest problem was the sump form which started to crumple from the weight. It all turned out ok in the end, though. Just out of paranoia, I put a layer of ceramic fiber between the slab and the front wall of the kiln to insulate the slab. Also, there is a tube installed so the pump hose and plug will be out of sight for the most part.
There was some crete left over, so I was able to put in a bit of a walkway/work area out the door of the studio. This previously had a step down, which made it very difficult to roll heavy objects like my lathe stand, etc… in and out of the door. Now the step has been eliminated, and a small work area created between the kiln and the studio.
Before and after pics:
forms going in…
sump form
about half done…
the pipe for the pump hose and power, will chop off later.
