{"id":2422,"date":"2015-02-14T13:06:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-14T04:06:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/?p=2422"},"modified":"2015-02-14T13:06:19","modified_gmt":"2015-02-14T04:06:19","slug":"what-ive-been-up-to","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karatsupots.com\/wordpress\/2015\/02\/what-ive-been-up-to.html","title":{"rendered":"What I’ve been up to…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a gas firing a couple of weeks back which was mostly line blends and other glaze combination tests.\u00a0 More than half of the ware in the kiln was glaze tests. Finally trying to get to the bottom of my Chosen Karatsu glaze woes, which started after my ash source changed. Both of my bread and butter glazes stopped working, and it now seems that I just made a spectacularly bad choice for my replacement ash. I tested 3 different ash types in the load and came up with two types that seem to work pretty well. I will mix up small amounts of both glazes with this new ash and\u00a0 see how they work. If things look good, I can then go ahead and mix up a larger batch.<\/p>\n

I made a batch of soba choko as well, to take with me to Tokyo toward the end of this month. I’ll be participating in a small event and needed some small things to\u00a0 take and show.<\/p>\n

In prep for the spring firing of the wood kiln, I’ve started making work a little different that\u00a0 I have done before, more playing with rim shapes and putting feet on things. The larger platters\u00a0 are actually inspired by some old Shino and Karatsu pieces of similar shape. Almost everything pictured in this post is porcelain, either pretty white stuff, or ‘dirty’ having been run through my pugmill which contained red stoneware previously. I always hear how porcelain is so difficult to work with, but my experience is the opposite. It seems very forgiving compared to my usual short, large particle clay bodies.<\/p>\n

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