Here are the first of a bunch of water jars and flower vases that are going into the kiln this early fall. I really needed some practice coiling, paddling, and collaring in necks on the kickwheel and 船徳利 funadokkuri (boat flasks) are the perfect shape for it. Traditionally these were used as flasks for oil, etc. on boats. They needed to be hard to tip over, hence the wide flat bottom. Now they are mostly used for flower arrangements.
All of the water jars will have wooden lids made for them. I’ve done one or two in the past with surprising positive response from viewers/customers. The lids are fun to make, since they are a non traditional item, you can play around a bit with them. I’ll post some lids later on, if the pots make it through the firing.
3 boat flasks and one taller crane necked flaskwater jars. any marks in the clay need to be pretty over the top, because the glaze covers them over for the most part.lug and lip detailmore jars, a couple with ‘nail heads’ added, instead of lugs. You sometimes see these on tea cups and food dishes in Karatsu ware.
all together now… The tallest flask is about 28cm tall,dry.Karatsu meets pueblo water jar, with kneeling, bowing tea person receiving tea. This started as a lug and sort of went bananas from there. This could be one of those things where I later slap myself.Tall necked vase with two pairs of tea people bowing.Karatsu meets pueblo water jar. sorry for the order here…Lug detail. I really must have wanted to drink tea that day.boat flask with porcelain additions. Here’s the big question: Will they pop off upon drying?tall necked flower vase with lugs, (finally some normal ones)
The last slab of the bunch is the biggest at about 10kg/25lbs. I wanted an ocean motif and started out with ideas for iron brush decoration of waves and ocean birds, with a clear feldspar glaze. Somewhere along the way it changed into two opposing wave patterns, one stamped and the other carved.
The pattern is identical, but the exterior wave pattern was made with my paddle, carved with a wave pattern and used like a bench chisel, placing it on the clay and tapping it with a mallet to create a repeating pattern. The center wave pattern is the same as what is carved into the paddle, but varies more because it follows the changing width of the center swath.
If I can get this one to dry without cracking, it should take the firing ok. It will be glazed in either a white ash glaze or a green ash glaze. A nice runny ash glaze should fill in the texture and accentuate the pattern nicely.
tabula rasa. I haven’t decided what to do with this yet. It is double the size of the others, 10kg of clay.stamped pattern finished, pattern for carving drawn in.Carving finisheddetailEdge treatment finishedDetaildetail
It has become increasingly obvious over the last year or two that a major remodeling of the studio was going to be necessary. As output has increased and work habits have changed, and the fact that I want to put in a wood burning stove for winter heating, changing the configuration of the studio has become unavoidable. I’d been putting it off for a long time because it is going interrupt, but I last week it finally reached critical mass and I decided to bite the bullet and get to work. So…
First order of business is to get the stairs into a more manageable place, and add some floor space to the second floor. Here is a series of photos of the project:
Start. Gotta get the stairs out of the way, remove the visible section of floor, and remove the shelving underneath.Stairs removed, floor next.Shelving and floor gone.
Interesting note here: when I removed the floor and started taking things off the shelf so I could dismantle it, I found my studfinder that I’d been searching for since, well since I put in that floor section 4 or 5 years ago. I looked everywhere for that thing!
Bottom shelf/clay storage gone.
I’ll still need to remove and redo the shelving at left, but for now just removed enough to get this project accomplished. Baby steps…
Post secured, main beam laid over the top.Oops, very heavy stairs on the wrong side of the beam.
The ‘beam’ is actually two 4.5 cm thick boards screwed together. In my rush to get the beam in place, I forgot to move the stairs to a place within the work area. Doh! Stairs 1, Homo Sapiens Sapiens 0. But it all worked out ok, I threw the rope over the newly placed beam and used it to lower the stairs to the ground, then slid them over near to their final resting place, without destroying any discs in my back. Yes! Stairs 1, Homo Sapiens Sapiens 1. Take that, stairs!
Stairs on correct side of beam, cross supports almost in.
This is my first project where I have discovered the forbidden delights of the Simpson Strong-Tie. I’d seen them before in the States, but only recently in Japan, and only at one of the home improvement stores. They saved me all kinds of time, since I didn’t have to cut all the joints for the floor joists, and as an added bonus, they’re cheap.
Floor boards almost done.
I secured all of the floor boards from below, so there are no screws or screw holes visible on the floor surface, and no need for wood plugs or putty.
Floor boards done, stairs back in place.
As you can see, the stairs come awful close to the remaining shelving at left, but they are accessible. Moving the shelving is on the to-do list. Still, looking good from here…
The view coming up the stairs.
Nice expanse of natural wood with no nails or screws visible.
Staring down the floorboards.The view of the stairs from the far corner. All done.
All finished. This is the view from the doorway side of the shop looking back toward the stairs. The original part of the second floor at left. Stairs are up against the wall, and the studio already feels roomier.
is split, stacked, and ready to go. Now all I need are some pots to fire….
the last of it. splitting done.Douglas fir stacks next to kilnfour palettes of slender cedar and pine, two palettes of douglas fir.the stuff that wouldn’t fit on the kiln side of the studio
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.
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.
The bottom gets wrapped
Rear. Filling the cracks with mud was fun. Nice, soft mud, slung it right in there, makes a satifying splat.
Front arch
All done. The top is left open for water to escape. Though it will be covered with a tarp if rain comes.
