Peter's Pottery

Cone 6 glazes, bowls, tiles, and tomato sex!!

2012-01-23T20:22:00.000+13:00

I have been doing a lot of glaze testing over the last few weeks. Whilst this has been somewhat exhausting, I have gained a lot of useful information about some glazes that are good for around cone 6 to cone 7, let's say in the region of 1205 - 1230 Centigrade 2201- 2246 Fahrenheit, all depending on how quickly your kiln climbs up to temperature.

To suit my clay I am firing until cone 6 is completely down and cone 7 is starting to bend. There is sufficient heat in the kiln to bring cone 7 down as the kiln is cooling.

Glaze tests and a commissioned set of bowls that I completed recently.

The most useful base glaze that I have found for cone 6 is a very easy to remember one. Danny Moorwood, a potter friend of mine recommended it, and I also found it on the digitalfire.com (glossy base glaze) site; as follows:
20 Wollastonite
20 Fritt 3134 (F 4108)
20 Potash Feldspar
20 Silica
20 China Clay

Danny uses ball clay rather than china clay. I have been mostly using a 50/50 mix of ball clay and china clay. The substitution of ball clay for china clay does slightly lower the maturing temperature of the glaze. I use fritt 4108, as 3134 is not available here. I think they are fairly similar though, essentially they are a soft borax fritt.

This clear glossy glaze fits the clay I use very well, with no sign of crazing. I did also try two other variations on the glaze that digitalfire.com mention on their site, one was a low expansion version (to further assist in glaze fit) and the other was a satin version. To be honest I found neither as good as the simple one that I have recorded above. Due to the high amount of clay in this glaze, it is possible to use it as a raw glaze on dry pots, and I have been doing this with some success.

Wollastonite is an interesting material, it is calcium silicate, and as such provides both calcium and silica to a glaze. I suppose that it is really a natural fritt. Wollastonite is used as a flux and has the advantage over calcium carbonate (whiting) in that it does not have to get rid of lots of carbon dioxide in the course of the firing, which can be a potential source of pin-holing in glazes.

These all look very similar, but have significant changes to the base glaze.

As an experiment, I did a version of the glaze with fritt 4110 (an alkaline fritt), soda feldspar and increasing amounts of petalite, my aim was a more alkaline base that would give me blue-greens with copper. It didn't..... In fact my variations made almost no discernible difference (as shown in the photo above), but a complete substitution of petalite for feldspar made for a crazed glaze that was not quite mature.

One simple test that was fun to do (and far more rewarding), was the one in the photo above. On the right is the base glaze with 0.4 percent of chromium oxide. In the center is the base with 0.4 chromium oxide, and 0.5 cobalt carbonate. On the left is the base with 0.4 chromium oxide, 0.5 cobalt carbonate, and 4 percent tin oxide. The tin oxide is trying its best to make red from the chromium oxide, but the cobalt blue is making the red turn violet.

I also did a variation with increasing additions of dolomite. The dolomite was to encourage some little crystals to grow in the glaze to make it more interesting to look at (a bit like looking into a rock pool at the beach), you might be able to see this process in the main sequence of tiles in the photo above.

The first complete tile on the left of the photo has a green translucent glaze that you can see right through even though it is fairly dark. The glaze has 3 percent copper carbonate and two percent iron in it, but no dolomite. The tile to the right of it has 5 percent dolomite added to the glaze, which lightens it a little, and the one to the right of that has 5 percent more dolomite, notice how the glaze gets darker again, and there is a dusting of tiny pale crystals over it. By the time we get to the tile at the right end the glaze is looking a sugary and paler blue-green colour. This tile has15 percent dolomite added to the glaze. I used the 10 percent dolomite version of this glaze to put on some bowls that I was commissioned to make someone recently.

It is always good to try the effect of putting one glaze over another, and it is especially good to try this when you are doing test tiles in a controlled and orderly sort of way. When I am glazing pots I often put one glaze over another, and frequently cannot remember afterward what glazes I combined together in this way! I always mean to write it down, but forget every time! The combination in the photo above is chrome-tin red over "floating blue". On its own the floating blue came out rather a muddy grey-brown for me (the sort of colour that a child's paint box goes if all the colours are muddled up together), but this was transformed into a lovely blue where the red glaze flowed over the top!

under-glaze. The iron glaze tends to bubble up through the top glaze, and both go for a slide and create the lacy pattern that you see.

chrome-tin red on a 9 inch bowl (230mm).

One of the most exciting cone 6 glazes that I tested, and have started to use, is the chrome-tin red that I found on June Perry's web site, shambhalapottery.com. She has posted a wonderful collection of glazes there for cone 6 and for cone 10, and it is a great resource for any potter who wants to test glazes. I have used the chrome-tin glaze in the bowl in the photo above. It is a bad photo unfortunately, but you can see from it that the glaze develops an opalescent purple where it is thick, rather like the "bloom" of a ripe red plum.

The glaze is as follows:
21 Gerstley Borate
16 Nepheline syenite
11 China Clay
20 Whiting
32 Silica
5 Tin oxide
0.15 Chromium oxide

In my first test of this glaze I put in too much chromium oxide.... not sure how much, but I know it was wrong because my second batch is a much paler green when I apply it to the pot. When it is fired, the first version of this glaze comes out a darker purple-red; the second "correct" batch is a much brighter red. Nice purples can be made by adding very small quantities of cobalt to the glaze, or, if the chromium oxide is left out, good blues can be made with additions of cobalt.

I glazed up some goblets and used the chrome-tin red on a number of them. One other splendid characteristic of this red is that it does "break" nicely over detail, so the throwing rings of the goblets show up well. The blue version of this glaze also shows detail well too.

I have been experimenting with some 4 inch tiles. I have spared little thought for the tourist trade over the years, most of the time I have been fully absorbed in my task of learning to make pots, kilns, and other important things, but it is also a good idea to try to stay afloat financially, so......

I thought that sheep, cows, and kiwis would be a good start. Here I am just incising a design into a leather hard tile with a couple of wooden tools and a needle. Over the top I put a clear glaze with a bit of copper and iron in it.

I do like old Persian pottery, and I copied part of a Persian design when I decorated the tile below. I have done hardly any under-glaze type decoration before, so it seemed a good way to practice.

Laura has been helping in the studio lately, and she made tiles too, and most of the test tiles. She decorated the tile below whilst I was doing my "Persian" one.

It is supposed to be summer here, but has been quite cold and un-summery the last two days. There was even talk of snow on some of the high hills.... In spite of all that, we have a very large crop of plums ripening on the trees in our garden, and these show in the photo of the lily that Laura took recently (below).

My tomatoes are heading towards being an expensive failure. They did grow, but few tomatoes have shown any sign of setting. Now that the weather is getting chilly, we will be rather lucky to have anything from them. Anyway, in desperation I did some research into the personal habits of tomatoes, and found out that they are supposedly self fertile, but the flowers do need to be shaken around a bit, and the best time is the middle of the day! So...., I have been out amongst the tomatoes around noon each day, giving them as much encouragement as I can! I call it tomato sex, and I really hope that they enjoy it enough to make some baby tomatoes!

One useful discovery that I have made is that it is possible to use a scanner to record the glaze tests (one advantage of doing tests on flat tiles). I also was able to record the recipes by flipping the test tiles over and scanning the reverse side. The only thing to be really careful of is of scratching the glass on the scanner.
I write all the recipes on the backs of the tiles before they are fired with a paintbrush dipped in a watered down mixture of iron oxide and manganese.

Anyway, hope some of that is helpful. I have been working rather long days lately, basically from dawn to when I go to bed, so I have not been able to find much time to spend on the Internet. I am afraid that I am neglecting you all!
Kind Thoughts, P.

Why Does Cat Food Taste Better at 3 AM?

2012-01-11T09:52:00.000+13:00

Smartcat unblocked my stopped up blogger's brain this morning, with a line about dragons being fed milk to drink and becoming cats. It was such a charming and interesting image, that... well, here I am again, pounding the computer keyboard! Inspired!

Ginger on Christmas Morning....!

Cats, of course, are also a form of alarm clock... or alarming clock...., that are set to howl, yowl, or rake the bed with their claws, when ever it is imperative that the feline tummy be filled. As alarm clocks, cats are at their most effective. Unlike the battery powered, ticking versions, with bells, buzzers, or beeps, cats are inventive and creative; they can always surprise with newer and nastier ways of rousing a sleeper. If a howl or the destruction of some prized possession with claws doesn't bring a result, then there is always the time honored flying leap onto the legs or stomach of the unfortunate human, with legs braced for maximum effect. A feigned cat fight in the middle of the bed can also shake a human into some sort of life.

Sometimes you look at a cat and are glad that it is not bigger!

As I write this, Nigella Stopit is sound asleep in a nice chair. She is exhausted after her night's entertainment. To her credit, her 3AM feed did prompt me to check the kiln at a helpful time whilst it was firing, and my total inability to sleep after that ensured that I was able to fire the kiln efficiently and quickly, finishing the firing by 6.58AM. As you can see, even the smallest member of our household does contribute something to the production of pottery here, in their very own way!

The last weeks of December through to what ever day in January we are now, have been a busy time for me. I was commissioned to make some bowls, hopefully in time for Christmas. The commission seemed harmless enough, but it transpired that the bowls had to be a different shape, size, colour, and fired to a different temperature than I would normally use. From a purely economic point of view, I should have said "no" and taken some days off around Christmas. From a preservation of sanity point of view, I should have most definitely said "no", and taken several weeks holiday. But, I'm a silly old fellow, so I embarked into what has been quite an interesting three weeks or so of work. If I look at it in a good way, which I mostly do, I would say that I have had the benefit of an intensive masterclass in formulating slips and engobes for leather hard clay and dry clay, exploring cone 6 glazes and learning to adjust and tweak them. I've even made plaster hump molds and slump molds, and have done some really interesting experiments with under glaze decoration, and so the list goes on.

On the potter's wheel making a mold for a very large bowl.

Here is another one full of plaster.

Of course I did this "masterclass" without a master... we make our own entertainment here, so I saved on fees, and I did have exclusive use of an electric kiln without having to compete for space with other students... Yay!

Last night's firing waiting to be loaded into the kiln.

Anyway, progress is being made, and a grand load of test tiles was fired through the night to further develop glazes that I have found promising. Once I have got a few more things to work properly, I'll share a few of the more successful recipes with you.

I was delighted with this chrome-tin red (bowl on the left),
the chrome-tin recipe was from June Perry's Shambhala Pottery site.

Here is another view of the bowls, the one on the right is "floating blue" but had hardly any blue "floating"!

I say that I have been without a "master" on this "masterclass", however, I must give huge thanks and credit to those of you out in the wider world of the internet who post useful information about glazes, and the 101 other things that relate to pottery. Some of you have toiled for hours testing glazes, and have shared the information, and it is a truly wonderful thing.

Sometimes I use bad bowls as testers, the ones at the back have various glazes, and glaze bases with stains.

Some particularly helpful sources of cone 6 glaze information have been:

http://digitalfire.com/4sight/education/g1214m_cone_5-7_20x5_glossy_base_glaze_114.html

http://www.shambhalapottery.com/technicallinks.html

http://www.jnevins.com/cone6glazes.htm

Christmas was unexpectedly quiet... let's say that the weekend before was an odoriferous one, with the town sewer blocking and forming a lake on our land..., the tummy bugs that followed ensured that Christmas was just us and the cats. We were able to get together with my parents for Christmas Day two weeks later. I quietly worked right through, and it was nice keeping upright and occupied.

I am excited about some of the cone 6 glaze stuff that I have learned, and am really wanting to develop some of the underglaze decoration further as well. I am most impatient for the kiln to cool, as there are some rather interesting tests in there......

Happy New Year Everyone!

Happy Christmas Everyone!

2011-12-22T18:41:00.000+13:00

Laura took this photo a few days ago of the flowers that she has planted around this place, and I thought that I would spread a bit of Christmas Cheer and some summer warmth by putting it on the blog today!

Laura's little hands seem to have been at work everywhere outside.

If I take the time to open my eyes, and to be still....

.. and try not to get grumpy if I have to bend under low branches and struggle past big thorny things...

I find treasure and delight all around...

We won't be having snow this Christmas..., but these flowers are like little snow flakes!

.. and this flower looks like a cake with yummy pink icing....!

Happy Christmas Everyone! Special hugs and greetings to family and friends in distant lands!

From Peter, Laura, Nigella Stopit, and Ginger

Tall Silent Type

2011-12-14T23:55:00.000+13:00

In the dim dark distant days when I was teaching evening classes to help make ends meet when I was a painter, I prowled up and down behind the students who were hard at work at their easels and tried to help them as best I could.

Laura occasionally modeled for me if there was a portrait class, and sometimes, after the class was over, she would say that she could tell when someone was doing really badly, as I would become rather quiet. I admit that I did struggle with what to say. I did not mind a bit if a person was trying hard, and doing their best, and I would move heaven and earth if I could to help them, but it was difficult to find a balance between pointing out where things were disastrously wrong and offering enough hope to encourage them forward to make things better. What you could say varied from person to person. I did care about people that I taught, mostly anyway, and there was always so much I had to learn myself to make me a better teacher.

Teaching can be a very tough thing to do, and some cope with it better than others, I know that there are retired teachers who still suffer from occasional nightmares where the stresses of the classroom still come back to bite them.

One benefit of the the teaching that I did was that I have become better at learning. I found this of great help when I started potting about 7 years ago. In a painting or drawing class, the teacher often has a great advantage over the student, in that they are walking round the class and viewing the pupil's work from a distance. I always encouraged my students to take a pace or two back from their work and it usually helped them a great deal when they actually followed that simple advice. In my potting I have learnt the value of "stepping back a little" to try to understand what is really going on. Sometimes this may actually be a physical step back from the work, other times it might be a mental step. A pause. A time to ask "Why?", or "How?".

Laura's comment to me about my becoming quiet, was instructive, and I did my best to improve in that area. With me though, when there is silence, there is usually trouble!

I have not posted on my blog for about a month, and..., well..., um.... silence! Maybe silence has been the best thing really. Some of the time has been difficult and depressing; however, not all was bad, in fact some things were very good indeed. We had an enjoyable couple of days in Christchurch recently, getting together with Laura's parents, her brother and sister in law. There was a special occasion that brought us all together...Laura had a birthday to celebrate, and it was lovely that her parents were able to travel down from the North Island as far as Christchurch.

Christchurch has changed a lot from how it was when I visited just over a year ago. Whilst some areas are largely intact, many buildings have been demolished after the series of earth quakes, and there is plenty of evidence around of buildings with temporary repairs, and lots of work in progress. Churches seemed to be some of the buildings most seriously damaged, but that may have been simply because they were some of the more visible buildings. Many of the churches were old stone structures, with towers, stained glass windows, and so on. It was really all to do with structures, physical structures with physical laws. You shake some things, or drop some things, and they break. That is how things are.

There has been a bit of a scramble to demolish old brick buildings and to label them unsafe, in truth some of them are. Like a plague, this scramble has started to spread further afield than Christchurch, and some buildings in other towns, such as Court Houses and School halls have abruptly been closed, apparently with little thought given as to how the Court or School was supposed to continue its work.

It should be remembered that the greatest loss of life was in the 25 year old 6 story CTV building, and in the 48 year old 5 story Pyne Gould building. The 15 floor Hotel Grand Chancellor, built between 1985 and 1988, developed an alarming lean and seemed on the point of collapse, threatening I think about 400 businesses in the immediate area. This building is currently being demolished. The 17 or 18 (it varies in the articles that I have read!!) story high Forsyth Barr building had a stairway collapse, trapping many people on upper floors. From an engineering point of view there should be interesting lessons to be learnt, and I hope that they have been.

There are some people that call for Christchurch Cathedral to be restored stone by stone. I hope that a far more modest wooden building is made, and a little memorial park. It would be nice to think of the heart of a City, where people of many faiths, or non at all, could feel welcome to sit together in peace.

The bus station where we caught our bus home had been made out of a shipping container, in which was a small counter with two staff behind it, and the rest of the container was packed with people and their luggage keeping out of the rain whilst they waited for the bus to arrive.

I am doing some large pots at the moment, as big as I can fit into my electric kiln. If I make them a nudge over 2 feet tall, they just fit in after they have dried due to the shrinkage of the clay.

I would love a much larger electric kiln!

If you have got this far through this post on my blog you will have noticed several photos of tops of pots. I have been fascinated with tops of pots for quite some time. How this part is finished determines a lot of the character of the pot. Does it lift upwards optimistically? Is the top closed in protectively? Does it make you think of a hat, a neck, a pipe or part of a machine? Does it make the pot look like a flower opening in the sun?

I have recently had a little operation on my ears to make it possible to do some air travel, some of you may remember that I had to abandon a trip to the USA just over a year ago due to both my ears suffering an internal hemorrhage on my flight from Dunedin to Auckland. The operation is really only a temporary fix and there have been a few set backs health wise after the operation, but I think we are getting on top of things now, which is in part why I feel like writing again! It would be so nice to be able to jump on a plane and just be able to fly up to Auckland again and see friends and galleries there, and ... of course I would love to be arrange things to actually manage a trip overseas, it was very sad to have missed out on America last year. We will take a careful step at a time, and see how we go.

As usual Christmas has caught us out, and no cards sent anywhere as yet. It is hardwired into me somewhere that Christmas should be in the middle of winter, the summer Christmas season leave me bewildered! I have got some tomatoes planted though!

Big Pot...., Whoopeee!

2011-11-12T18:21:00.000+13:00

L to R: today's big pot, a little one from the same firing, and the big pot of a week ago.

I fired another large pot this week, another long firing that ended with me all tired, smelling of burnt cooking oil and smoke, and thinking that a change of career for something with sensible hours and, oh, some pay would be nice too!

This morning I opened the kiln and took out the result of the firing. Now I want to make more pots again!

The pot is 19 and a half inches tall (nearly half a metre), and I applied a crystalline glaze with a dash of copper carbonate in it to the top third, and a saturated iron glaze with a chun glaze over the top to the lower two thirds. I had planned for the crystalline glaze to run over the ones on the lower part of the pot, but was not sure how far the glaze would run, but I did expect it to be very mobile, crystalline glazes are!

I fired to cone 9 (1260C/2300F), then dropped the temperature in stages to around 1100C (2012F), holding it around there for about 6 hours. After that I let the temperature drop to 800C (1472F) and introduced a line that dripped cooking oil into the kiln. I kept up the oil drip until the kiln was to 650C (1202F), turned it off, then let the kiln cool naturally from that point. It took me 24 hours from the start of the firing, to the time I was able to leave the kiln to cool. Two firings of that kind less than a week apart was not ideal, but I really needed this pot!

There are stunning "rainbow" effects where the crystalline glaze has put out astonishing purples, oranges, and iridescent colours where it has moved over the saturated iron glaze, this is something I never expected to happen. I did plan for the flowing glaze over glaze effect, in fact it my purpose when I made the pot to give room for a crystalline glaze to really run.

I am pleased with the crystals, they are very strong looking with well defined margins, and there are not too many of them.

Well, I'll keep this short, I am actually falling asleep at the keyboard!

Long Weekend

2011-11-09T22:15:00.000+13:00

Copper Red Crystals

Say it after Me
The two words, "long" and "weekend", when they fly in tight formation on the page or in conversation, usually have the blissful association of a three day holiday. Say it after me.... "L-o-n-g Weekend"..... and dream of a sunny day at the beach, or a restful few hours reading a book and dozing a little on a comfortable seat in the shade of a tree!

"Dream Fish", by Laura.... There are other things going on in there as well!

My Long Weekend
The weekend just past was a long weekend, but this was one with exactly the opposite meaning to the holiday one.

I suppose it started on Friday for me, with unloading a bisque firing from my electric kiln.

Three bisque fired pots freshly unloaded, and Ginger the cat!

Into the empty and still warm kiln I then loaded a glaze firing of crystalline glazed pots, and prepared the kiln to be able to do an oil drip reduction firing. In the kiln was a large vase, a small vase, a large bottle, and a small glaze test bowl, there was no room for anything else.... not even a cat!

To give you an idea of what a crystalline glaze firing is like, I have prepared a little summary of events from the times and temperatures that I recorded in my kiln log.

"Mr & Mrs Moon - At Home", by Laura

Friday November 4
12 midday
I had the kiln underway by midday, but, because the glazes were still a bit damp, I simply took the kiln slowly to where the pots could gently steam out the moisture, and kept that going for the rest of the afternoon with the bungs removed. My kiln is essentially manual, but you can set a temperature for it to switch off at. So for this, I set it up to switch off at about 100C (212F). Then every hour or so through the afternoon, I would check progress and reset the kiln if it was off. That way I can maintain a reasonably constant temperature in the kiln. The kiln is well insulated so it is very slow to lose heat if it goes off when at that temperature.

6 in the evening
There was no steam coming from the top vent of the kiln, so I started the firing. I always test for steam by holding a mirror over the top vent of the kiln. If it fogs up rapidly, I know that there is still moisture in the pots to get rid of.

(I am a bit cautious in this, and I know that quite a lot of potters would do the early part of the firing faster, but I do not lose work with pots blowing up in the kiln, and I do not usually have problems with glazes crawling due to being put wet into a kiln and then fired rapidly.)

10.15 in the evening
The kiln is at 500 C (932F). I have medium power selected on each of the three simmerstats that regulate the power to the kiln elements, and can go to bed for a little while.

"Ivy Tree", by Laura

Saturday November 5
1.30am
The kiln is now at 850C (1562F) and I move it to full power. I calculate the likely time for it to reach peak temperature by consulting previous firing logs, and set my alarm clock to wake me well before that, but I do not need it... Nigella Stopit wants to be fed just before 3am, and makes this known very forcefully!

3am
The kiln is 1150C (2102F), and I calculate that we have about another 40 minutes to go. I reset the alarm.

3.45am
I have been tossing and turning and not able to sleep. Something makes me get up just before the alarm. I find that the kiln has gone off and is showing 1250C (2282F) which is about 10 degrees below the 1260C (2300F) peak temperature that I was aiming for.

I am puzzled as the kiln must have come to peak temperature earlier than I thought. Actually, it is very easy to be puzzled at that hour of the morning, and I make myself understand what I am observing and force myself to think about it. I remove the bungs from the spy holes in the kiln and check the cones that I have set. Cone 8 is down, but cone 9 is still resolutely standing. Cone 9 should be down. I re-check to make sure that I am seeing things correctly, and it really is cone 9 that is standing tall. I switch the kiln on again, and keep a good watch until 9 does go down.

(What has probably happened is that we may have suffered a minor power cut. Even a brief interruption to our power supply will trip the kiln off, and it does not reset automatically. I am thankful that I almost always use cones when I do a glaze firing. Under-firing this by 10 degrees would have ruined the firing as the top temperature is very critical for crystalline glazes. I am very, very thankful for cones!).

3.58 am
1260C (2300F) Cone 9 down and kiln off.

4.43am
The kiln is at 1100C (2012F) and I restart it and put it on a medium setting that I know will do a reasonable job of holding the temperature steady.

5am
The kiln is holding 1100C (2012F) nicely, so I know that I can go to bed for a half hour rest before checking again... and again every half hour or so!

8.07am
I switch the kiln off, and allow the temperature to fall to 1045C (1913F). I am doing this dip in temperature to make a growth ring form in the crystals that should be growing on the pots. Sometimes I will do as many as 4 or more of these dips throughout the time that the crystals are growing, but for these pots I just want simple crystals with a growth ring near the outer margin.

8.27am
I turn the kiln on to a low setting and hold 1045C (1913F) for about 5 minutes then put the kiln on full power

8.45am
Back at 1100C (2012F), readjust the kiln to hold this temperature. By this stage of the firing I generally find that I have to use slightly more power to maintain the holding temperature.

9.07am
I repeat the dip in temperature and the climb, but this time switch the kiln off when nearly back to the holding temperature. I am hoping that this little dip and climb will do something interesting to the margin of the crystals that I have been trying to grow in the glazes.

The temperature changes helped produce the decorative margins to the crystals.

9.40am
Kiln at 1065C (1949F) I switch off.

12 midday
The kiln is at 820C (1508F), and I turn on a line that takes cooking oil into the kiln. I calibrate it carefully so that it is dripping cooking oil at a rate of about one drip per second. I am doing this to create an atmosphere in the kiln that is depleted of oxygen and high in carbon monoxide. This should have the effect of stripping oxygen atoms from the metals in the glaze, and making a dramatic change to the colour of the glaze. For example, a pretty copper green glaze can turn red, or even to shiny copper metal.

These crystals are red, but also have a metallic shine.

4.25pm
The kiln is at 615C (1139F) and I turn the oil drip off. Not much evidence of smoke through all the reduction period of this firing, and I am anxious that I did not have quite enough oil going through. I wanted to stick to the 1 drip per second though, as..., if I fiddled as I usually do, I have nothing to tell me in future what amount of oil was needed.

"Christmas Tree", by Laura

Sunday November 6
1pm the kiln is just below 200C (392F), and I risk a quick peep at the pots through the kiln lid (my kiln is top loading).

Hummm, sadly I was right, there really hadn't been enough oil dripping into the kiln, and what there was has only had a very minimal effect on the glazes. I consult my firing log book and work out that there are still enough hours left in the day to take the kiln back to 800C and do the oil drip reduction again. I shut the lid and turn the kiln back on!

The rest of the afternoon I am checking progress every half an hour and making necessary adjustments of the simmerstats to achieve a brisk, but not crazy, rate of climb.

6pm
The kiln is at 815C (1500F), I switch it off and I begin oil drip reduction again. This time more oil... quite a lot more!

Checking about once every 20 minutes, I keep the kiln in a smoky reduction atmosphere until it is down to 645C (1193F). Sometimes when I check the kiln, the kiln shed has smoke creeping out from gaps in the roofing iron.

8.30pm
Oil drip off. I can shut the kiln shed door and ... maybe get some sleep.

Monday November 7
1pm kiln just below 200C (392F), I risk a peep through the lid. This time the results look spectacular. I close the lid and write out the details of one of the pots on an exhibition entry form. Closing date for written entries 4pm Monday November 7. I make myself look almost presentable, and drive to town with my entry form, handing it in one and a half hours before the closing time.

Vase, 15 inches (381mm) high

After that I buy clay from Southern Clays in Dunedin. I deliver plant pots that I have made to a friend who commissioned them. Then I attend a 4.30pm monthly meeting of the Potter's Co-operative. Home by 8pm after shopping for groceries.

Vase, 6.5 inches (165mm) high. (My favorite from the firing)

Somewhere over the Friday and Saturday I installed and set up a Debian Linux operating system for my father on his computer, and it was lovely to see him on Saturday when he came to pick it up from me. Setting up a computer made a nice parallel activity to firing the kiln and thinking about pots and glazes. I do "unwind" sometimes by installing operating systems! Happy to report that his computer appears to be going well!

The three pots from the kiln

The purple bottle 17 inches (432mm)... I don't like it... It looked quite nice oxidized before the successful second reduction firing. It was white crystals with a white background then. The purple is not a particularly nice shade of that colour, and there are some areas that are discoloured with carbon that has got right into the glaze. It will make a good door stop!

Guess what.....
As I write this on Wednesday evening I am starting another crystalline glaze firing of the kiln!

Notes
*the close up photographs with this post are details of crystals that are on the little vase and the large vase that went through this firing. It is interesting how the size of a crystalline glazed pot does affect the shape and size of the crystals that grow on it. Part of the explanation for this is that the small pot may gain and lose heat more rapidly than the large one. Another explanation might be due to the placement of the pot in the kiln and what the temperature is in the space that it occupies.

**bisque fired pots. These are pots that have had a firing in the kiln up to a temperature that is high enough to make them strong enough to glaze easily. I bisque fire my pots to 1000 C (1832F), and currently glaze fire my crystalline glazed pots to about 1260C (2300F)

***crystalline glazed pots. These pots usually have a lot of zinc oxide in the glaze, between 20 to 30 percent. This much zinc will just about all go into solution in the glaze when it is at the peak temperature, but as the kiln begins to cool, the zinc is desperate to form crystals. By carefully controlling the peak temperature of the firing, the potter can determine the quantity of crystals that will form, by controlling the cooling of the kiln, the crystals can be grown to a particular size, and the shape can be influenced too. Crystalline glazing is an art and a science, and it requires enormous dedication and lots of testing. It is not for the faint hearted!

After the Ball is over....

2011-10-31T17:23:00.000+13:00

After the ball is over,

After the break of morn -

After the dancers' leaving;

After the stars are gone;

Many a heart is aching,

If you could read them all;

Many the hopes that have vanished

After the ball.

(Foster and Allen)

Someone worked out the the cost of hosting the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand was $168 for every man, woman and child in the country. This cost included the building and upgrading of stadiums for the event (or should that be stadia??). Costs like that are always open to debate, and the numbers depend on who does the adding up, what ingredients are put in the mixture, and what amounts are actually known. Our nearby city of Dunedin, population of about 120,000, erected a NZ $200 million stadium in time for the RWC, and we actually hosted a couple of early games down here, although we haven't yet seen the All Blacks (the NZ national team)... not even for a victory parade!

Well, the RWC has come and gone, NZ managed to bag the trophy, beating the French side by one point in a low scoring final game, and the dust is settling. There was some after match nastiness in the form of a $5000 fine to the French team for advancing down the pitch when the NZ side were performing a Haka at the beginning of the match. Well, the Haka is a war dance, and the sight of the French forming a V formation and walking slowly forward was an inspiring one and added to the drama of the occasion. I understand that technically the French team is said to have infringed a new rule about coming into the other side's half, or something, but I found the $5000 fine distasteful and it saddened me to think of the losing team having to pay out money before getting on the plane to fly home.

I made these ages ago, and moved them to my wooden shed. Nice to see them again. I have to make a big modification to my wood fired kiln to be able to fire them safely as they are too big and heavy for my kiln shelves.

All Black and Lacey....

This fine was one of a string of petty, small-minded deeds that the Rugby officials did over the course of the whole event that rather blighted it. The Rugby Monster was given rights to control advertising within a wide radius of the stadium when the matches were on. In one ridiculous case, women's lingerie shop, with an "All Blacks" display was told that they could face legal action for infringement of "the brand". Another stupid example was that a man attending a match in the company of his Toshiba lap top computer was made to cover the Toshiba label with a black sticker in order to enter the stadium, because only sponsor's logos were allowed to be shown there.... the list of such things goes on and on.

The Scary bit......

The thing that was actually scary about all this was the complete licence that the Rugby Machine had on what we all said, what we advertised, and what we did.

Knights of old...

In the hours that followed the last match, some commentators began to discuss the likely knighthood of the team captain and the coach, or even knighthoods to all the team. There was a warm fuzzy glow to such things that again rather got dampened... this time by discussion of eye gouging, kneeing and other foul play that apparently had been part of the final game. Did knights of old behave in such ways? (Sadly... they probably did!)

Out now..., a lovely tulip!

Environmental Catastrophe...

Meanwhile a rather more important drama had been unfolding a few miles off the coast of the North Island of New Zealand, near the port of Tauranga. There the Rena, a container ship, had struck a well charted reef at normal cruising speed, and was slowly dying, leaking oil and dropping containers into the sea. At first, when the body count of wild life killed by the oil spill was 6 penguins and one shag, this "environmental catastrophe" seemed to be almost embarrassingly hyped up by the media. Overseas experts were consulted and flown over, and opinions sought, answers demanded. We had reports from the beaches, from small vessels and helicopters by a throng of media who almost seemed impatient to see the first globs of oil on the pristine sand.

As time dragged on, and the body count of dead birds went to 1000 (and more recently to 1300 birds), the words "catastrophe" and "disaster" seemed more fitting.

Disbelief....

Other words have been used too... Many have expressed disbelief as to how a container ship can steam onto a well charted reef in good conditions in broad daylight. (It was rapidly put about that it was the captains 44th birthday that day). Many have also expressed disquiet and amazement as to how long it appeared to take before there was any apparent effort to pump oil off the ship or to deal with falling shipping containers. There are various conspiracy theories circulated, and we all became impatient "arm chair experts".

Probably the thing that has surprised me most about the recovery of oil has been that the attempt began with a long length of 7.5 cm hose and a single pump. The consistency of the bunker oil on board the ship was that of Vegemite, or Nutella. This heavy oil was almost impossible to pump without first warming it, and the attempt to transfer it to a waiting tanker barge through such a small diameter pipe seemed to me to be like asking someone to drink a whole keg of beer through a straw! In the case of the stranded ship the "keg" was 1700 tonnes of fuel oil!

Down Below...

Some days the weather was too rough. Other days 60 to 90 tonnes would be pumped off. The pounding of the ship onto the reef in the heavy swell caused it crack around its middle. At times the ship was given only hours more to live. The salvage crew had to send divers within the broken ship to try to access a submerged oil tank. Can you imagine that, a ship listing more than 20 degrees. Hull cracked open. Access below by slippery and leaning companion ways. No power below, so navigation in that dark place was by torchlight. The hull half filled with water, filth, oil and stinking refuse. The ship groaning and creaking with each lift and fall of the sea. Imagine submerging into the foul water, deep within the ship and searching for the fuel tanks. The drama dragged on.

Amazingly, over 1000 tonnes of fuel have now been pumped off the ship, which is an astonishing achievement given the difficult conditions and the nature of the oil.

Whilst on land the question of knighthoods for sports people has been given some attention, I wonder if awards for the people that actually risk their lives pumping oil from the ship has been given any thought at all?

Sadly the achievement of the "small people" often gets tarnished by the actions of those in power. There was some good rugby played in spite of the heavy handed action of the rugby officials, and there is heroic work being undertaken by people trying to mop up the mess from the stranded ship, a ship that should not have been stranded at all.

Behind a Smoke Screen....

Well, you may not know it, certainly many in New Zealand seem almost unaware of it, but we have an election coming on November 26. This election has slipped under consciousness rather like a navy destroyer manoeuvering into an attack position behind a smoke screen. Actually the last three years of National led government have been like that too. Rather more has been going on under the watch of these grey suited leaders than people seem to notice or care about. Those that might care and are suffering, probably have little power, money, or voice.

Occasionally the opinions of those who do speak out, or are outspoken, are wiped off the record, take the recent case of a a regular guest on New Zealand's National Radio afternoon programme who was critical of Mr Key, our Prime Minister. The man was banned from appearing on the show again, and I noticed, when I searched for the pod cast of that broadcast, that the relevant episode had been removed from the archive! The man I am referring to was a Left wing commentator, known as Bomber Bradbury. Three New's coverage of the incident and the text of what was said can be found here. I will leave it to you to decide if what was said was so bad as to warrant a ban of this kind.

What really disturbs me about the radio incident and some aspects of the Rugby World Cup, is the feeling that those who can... are exercising the sort of power that is not normally associated with a society that embraces the principle of free speech.

Here are one or two photos to finish off with for those who have bravely trundled through this long post to the end!

New pots drying in the kiln shed.

Laura is busy painting lovely new things.

At this time of year the garden brings colour and pleasure.

October's Half Done Already.... Where did the first half go??

2011-10-17T17:43:00.001+13:00

Camellia

When I started writing this I had a sudden flash of wisdom...and started again...! It may have been that the task of pushing plastic keys and forming words and sentences that summed up the week past, actually triggered a bit of mental activity, a spark, in a rarely used quarter of my brain!

New bisque fired mugs and pots... more in the kiln!

My life mostly revolves around making pots. I have quite a narrow focus out of necessity. With potting there is always a lot to do. I often think that pots that are in the process of being made are like zoo animals that have to be fed morning and night, mucked out and carefully watched in case anything unexpected develops! Even the weather is a big factor in the early life of a pot. In the winter, the infant pots sulk on the shelves and refuse to dry, so a fire has to be made to keep them warm and happy. In the summer time, the pots dry too fast. They are like elephants without water, or a hippopotamus family without a muddy place to wallow! A potter takes on the role of parent, guardian, and zoo keeper whenever the hands reach for a fresh clod of clay. It is quite a thought. Although it is not the actual thought that had me re-writing the beginning of this post.

Before..... Two pots and one bowl being made by coil and throw method.

Last week I achieved quite a lot in the studio. I fired two bisque firings of new work in the electric kiln, and made some new pots. Towards the end of the week making two very large (for me) pots of 20 - 22 inches in height by the throwing and coiling method.

After.... The tallest pot is just a shade over 22 inches (56 cm).

I am quite excited about those really, pots that size do start to have a physical presence that their smaller relations rarely have. I would like to go bigger still, but will need to find a way of firing them. As it is, pots this size will have to be fired one at a time in the electric kiln that I have for a crystalline glaze firing, which does make everything a big commitment of time and resources.

Big pots have a physical presence that I like.

The thought that caused me to re-write the beginning of this post was related to work and the "boom-bust" work pattern that I so easily fall into. Longer and longer hours, work seven days in a week, then the health takes another tumble. The thing is that I often get up in the morning feeling like I have to spend the day catching up on all the less productive days where things have not worked out so well. There are always deadlines to meet, floors to mop, pots to glaze, pots to make, kilns to fire, paperwork to do, and so on, and I feel so far behind.

My flash of wisdom was that I was unconsciously placing little value on the down times, the "non-productive" times of my life. I was seeing them as a waste of time, barren periods that had to be compensated for by working twice as hard on the "good" days. In cold hard money terms, this comes close to being true, but in more personal ways, it is nonsense! The times of illness and low productivity are a part of my life and of who I am, just as much as the highly productive days. Yes, this can be frustrating and it makes earning enough money to live very difficult, but had my life gone differently, I would be a very different person too. Not necessarily better or worse, but different! We are, after all, the sum of all of our days, not just the ones that we ordain to be "worthy" of us! So, the difficult times need to be "lived" and given value just as much as the good times. They are life, after all, and life is to be treasured. If I manage to keep this in mind, I think that I will find things less stressful and I will enjoy the moment more.

Daffodil

One very good thing that happened in my "unproductive" chunk of February was that I rediscovered the joys of reading! I was rather concerned to find that it was quite difficult to read the first book, because my silly head had got into the habit of just skimming short paragraphs and pulling out "relevant" information. This bad habit was something that I had learned unconsciously from reading so much online. An actual physical book requires some different skills, and an ability to "tune out" of the everyday world, and to build up another world in the imagination. This is a very good thing for both mind and body, and is worth nurturing.

One strange, but wonderful, book that I am currently reading is "Telescope" by Jonathan Buckley. Jonathan Buckley has most original powers of description. For example, and do read this slowly...

"An operatic dawn to welcome me: pale peach sun behind miles-wide rungs of amber cloud; fields and trees daubed with diluted honey; in the background, low undulations of indigo hills; jubilant blackbirds. At 5.30 a.m. a garage door slides open as smoothly as an eyelid, releasing a vast black BMW, the first commuter out of the blocks."

I can see those "miles-wide rungs of amber cloud", and the garage door opening "as smoothly as an eyelid". I think that I will now always look at a garage door in a new way!

Ginger insisted on having his photo taken!

Laura was commissioned to paint something a little unusual, a 21st birthday key. This she did on a grand scale, and it was nice to see her looking inspired and enthusiastic in the painting department.

The key was full of interesting details, here a fish plays a saxophone!

Commissions can be very, very hard to do, but they can pull one through into new territory and open up fresh ideas which bring a spring to the step!

Well..., I'd better post this now. Sorry not to be visiting so many blogs as I usually do, I haven't forgotten you!

Bouncing Back

2011-09-30T16:29:00.001+13:00

Today the sky is the sort of heart-stoppingly beautiful pale blue that should be reserved for tiny wild flowers growing in grassy meadows. The japonica bush is hung with pink flowers that look warm in the sun, and two small birds are peering into the flowers, attracted by the sweet nectar. It is spring and nature is running in wild circles like a dog on the beach. Even the air seems to bustle and swirl with urgency and life. The garden has been reborn. It seems like an artist has awakened and is splashing red, yellow, orange and green in the places winter had turned brown, black, and beige. How lucky we are to have the contrast between winter and spring. How much more joyful spring can be, because it is replacing what was cold, dark, dead, sleeping and silent with colour and life!

I am getting back into throwing on the wheel again after rather a long time away from my studio so these are practice really in the form of 1 kg pots, each one made from the same weight of clay.

Regarding my health, things have taken longer to come right than I thought, I had another setback last weekend with what was probably a return of the infection. Another trip to the doctor and more antibiotics and I appear to be progressing better now. I did try to do some work in my studio late last week, the first day managing only to clear some things off a table and give it a wipe before realising that I was already too tired to continue. Laura wisely gave me a book to read, put the cat on my lap, and I fell asleep until lunchtime. The last three days of this week have been a lot better, and I have managed half a day of throwing on the wheel each day. I have also been out for a short walk in the late afternoon, trying to extend the walk a little each time and to build up some strength again. It is important to get outside and to breathe fresh air, to set some goals, and also to see new things.

I continue to get a huge amount of pleasure from listening to music. YouTube has been a real asset of late. There are some really exciting, and weird, musical instruments out there too! I like to track down some of the stranger looking ones. It is fun finding ancient instruments with three necks, or violin-like things with keys to press instead of pressing the strings directly. I am currently in love with the baroque Lute and the hurdy gurdy.

"The Wren"

Hurdy-gurdy concert by virtuoso players Patrick Bouffard and Gilles Chabenat

Above should be links to music played on the hurdy gurdy. The hurdy gurdy is a stringed instrument, and the sound is made by a wheel turning on the strings, a bit like a mechanical violin, with the wheel replacing the violin bow. The instrument has several drone strings that make it sound a bit like the bagpipes, and the melody is played by pressing wooden keys which activate a simple mechanism for pressing on the melody strings to change the pitch of the note.

It is fascinating to do a search and to listen to a large selection of pieces for the hurdy gurdy, there are so many musical styles and interesting sounds.

Sorry to those of you who's blogs I usually visit and sometimes leave comments on... I've been rather neglecting everyone of late. I will return!!

Looking Inward!

2011-09-19T17:53:00.000+12:00

When you look into a kiln at stoneware temperature (wearing suitable eye protection of course), the first glimpse that you take may not make sense at all. Everything is almost white hot. White on white. You have to stop and think. You are witnessing a place so hostile and unlike the world where you live and breathe that you almost need an interpreter before you start to recognise something that might be the side of a pot, or the little setting of cones that you have placed to tell the temperature. For me, the inside of the kiln is also a place of profound mystery, it is like a microcosm of the universe a fraction of time after the big bang. Materials that seemed stable and dependable at room temperature are transformed by all the heat and are dancing little dances, swapping partners, recombining in new ways, and abandoning atoms of this and that.

It is true, I think, that there is a similar place at the centre of most of us. A place that is simple, unfiltered and raw. It is the Us where our innermost thoughts tumble and ferment. It is the place where we are wounded, or rewarded, where we are motivated, or where we crumple and die. Like the inside of the kiln at peak temperature, it is a place that is so unworldly and unfathomable that it is hostile to those who attempt to peer in. It is a lonely place. This loneliness is neither good or bad, although some fear it. This loneliness just is. It is part of the package of being human. If you are alive, and know that you are alive, than this lonely innermost place will be part of you too!

Looking into a kiln that is at high temperature is damaging to the eyes. To block out harmful radiation, you need suitable goggles (not just sunglasses!). Your view of the inner life of the kiln is therefore achieved through a filter, a veil, a mask.

We reveal or conceal the essential Us with veils, masks, and filters too, and wear different filters for different target audiences! We are selective.

One of the challenges of having a blog, is knowing just what part of one's life to share, and how much to withhold. My choice with this blog has been to lean a little away from the personal, and to focus mostly on the life of potting, and to share some practical stuff that might be helpful to others who are working with glazes and clay. People have given freely of so much to help me get a start at potting, and it is a rewarding and enjoyable part of the deal, as I see it, to be able to give back.

It is fun to see how other potters balance things. Some of you "vent" publicly when things upset you, others prefer to share cooking recipes! To conceal heartaches in pumpkin soup! One thread that there seems to be in common amongst most potters is generosity when it comes to sharing potting tips, and other help. I am so thankful for that. I am also thankful for the variety of approaches to the art of blogging.

I've spent the last two and a bit weeks rather unwell, which is why this post is a bit odd! Essentially the trouble was an infection that raced on through to a kidney and had me rather sick for the first few days. I am currently much better, but not very strong yet. When my temperature was high in the first few nights, I would lie awake at night composing blog posts in my head (there's dedication for you)... it helped pass the time! Happily none of them actually got written, but I can assure you that there were some minor masterpieces there! As I began to get better I found a lot of pleasure in music, and have been attempting to play classical music on the ukulele (the beautiful instrument that I recently got for my 101th birthday), and have spent many hours on the internet looking and listening to people playing banjo (various styles), and other instruments, such as the lute, the dulcimer, and the Hurdy Gurdy.

I wonder if some of you in America have heard of "Mean Mary", here's a link to a piece of her music that kept me amused "Big Red Barn", and another of Mary playing banjo with her brother Frank James playing guitar "Joy".

Must wrap this up now. Hope to be back in the studio again later in the week. The photos were taken recently around our garden. It is Spring here!

Purple Patch! Rule Breaking!

2011-09-04T12:45:00.002+12:00

Having previously discovered the dramatic effects of a reduction atmosphere on crystalline glazes containing titanium dioxide, I made a little kiln load of pots, glaze fired them, and then put them through another firing where I introduced cooking oil into the electric kiln at one drip per second as the kiln cooled from 800 to 620 Celsius (1472 - 1148 F). The results were most interesting, especially so if you saw the pots before and after the reduction firing. Let's do just that!

Here's a pot that has 6 percent titanium oxide in the glaze, giving white crystals on a white background. The pot has its stand and glaze catching saucer still attached, all that has to be separated from the pot after the firing, and any runs and sharp bits of glaze that are still attached to the pot have to be carefully ground off.


*Here is the same pot after the oil drip reduction firing, with white and green crystals on a purple background... amazing really!*

Here is a friend for the pot above, same glaze. In this one the glaze was a little thicker and the white was more "white" looking! The puddles of glaze in the saucer show just how much glaze runs off these pots whilst they are at high temperature in the firing. The glaze has to be runny when it is hot for the big crystals to grow.

More of the green, white, and purple... what fun!


This pot had a little change in the glaze recipe, notice the ivory colour, the "softer" looking crystals, and the strange greenish colour run off glaze in the catching saucer. I replaced the titanium with rutile, which is a mineral that is rich in titanium, but is not as refined. As is the case with people, some of the nicest people are not all that "refined" either, and the ups and downs that they have experienced in life add character. With rutile there are traces of iron and other impurities that can make it a very useful glaze ingredient.

You may notice a more ivory colour to the crystal margins, and the purple colour is deeper. Rutile also has a greater fluxing effect, and the crystals tend to grow faster than in a base with Titanium dioxide. For a more "perfect" outcome I would need to fire the two glazes separately, so as to enable me to juggle the temperatures for the optimal time for each glaze. Ideally I would prefer there to be more of the purple on this pot and the crystals to be a little smaller. I could also try to "tweak" the recipe to make it more compatible with the titanium variation.


*Here is another pot from the firing, also with the rutile glaze variation.*

Rules and Breaking Them!
The whole thing of what is "right" or "wrong" in the look of a crystalline glaze intrigues me. After all, I am sure that the first crystalline glazes occurred as a frustrating glaze fault rather than as something intended, and yet it has not taken people long to make rules! Some crystalline glazers would label a crystalline glaze, where most of the crystals touched, as being "over nucleated", and they might aim for between 3 and 5 large and spectacular crystals on their pots. Others are happier with an even coverage of much smaller crystal formations.

I do think that there is still a great deal to be explored with crystalline glazes. Crystalline glazes are runny by nature, and want to form waterfalls down the side of the pot when at high temperature! Could this be used expressively instead of caught in a catcher and ground off?

Playing with glaze runs!

The texture of touching crystals is rather like lichen or a bacterial growth; again, could this be used expressively?

Crystals as texture.

Crystalline glazes are often shiny, but they can also be matt (UK English) or matte (American English)! There are expressive possibilities here.

This little crystalline pot has a matt surface.

My feeling is.... that it is important to make things that obey the "rules", this can help with learning the craft and to master technique. And.... it is equally important to also make things that deliberately break the rules! Breaking the rules is all part of learning who we are. It is a bit like being a teenager!

Crystalline glaze with wood fired reduction and carbon trapping.

Several years ago, when I was teaching painting to groups of adults, I was often intrigued to observe how conservative amateur painters could be (and I am sure this is also true of photographers, writers, and musicians as well!). It always seemed remarkable to me that people who did not have to depend on selling paintings in order to make their livelihood, and did not even have to exhibit them, were often the most reluctant of all people to take risks, to try new techniques, or to paint something that might challenge them! It was like offering a child the whole contents of a lolly shop, and have the child refuse the "good stuff" and just select a single piece of plain chewing gum! (If that image is offensive, due to its un-healthiness... and, it does occur to me that it might be, let's say that it is like taking a vegetarian into a marvellous vegetarian restaurant and them ordering tofu with nothing else to go with it!)

Fear is the enemy here. The variety of fear that leads to rule making, the following of strange doctrines, intolerance, selfishness, and, ultimately, to ignorance!

Not sure why I went away on that tangent, put it down to too much coffee! I have been firing a crystalline glaze firing overnight and made an early start today to watch temperatures as the kiln came up towards the peak of the firing. It is nearing the middle of the day now and I will be able to shut off the kiln soon. This load is mostly crystalline bowls. I usually have a high failure rate with crystalline bowls (getting the glaze the right thickness is very important), and I need to do a lot of tests and firings in order to improve that. If it was too easy, it would not be so fascinating!

Hairy Potter is 101 Today!

2011-08-29T08:15:00.000+12:00

Rhonda the Cake Angel!

A cake fit for a 101 year old, made by Rhonda and Mark.

It is That Day again...., and I have decided to take the initiative this time and declare that it is my one hundred and first birthday. I may indeed stay 101 for a few more years, as I think that this age has considerable advantages. Whilst time has certainly left its mark upon this body, I am now beginning to receive compliments about how young I look for my age!

Friends Rhonda and Mark (who have appeared in other places on this blog) took the initiative and organised a celebration to mark this sudden welcome advance in my ageing process, and we were treated to an evening of karaoke music, a ukulele accompanied singsong (karaoke unplugged!), and frivolity. I even managed to grow my hair for the occasion, a task that consumed a whole ball of string and an hour or so of my time..., and became Hairy Potter for the evening!

It is chilly here at the early hour this morning that I am writing this and I have discovered that the shoulder length string wig does add considerable warmth!

Hairy Potter!

A gift that my dear Laura arranged for me was a new, and very lovely Ukulele. I have been frustrated for years by an instrument that has been very out of tune with itself due to being poorly made, and it is just wonderful to have a Real musical instrument that looks great and plays beautifully. I have already started to extend my repertoire away from the usual ukulele fare, and am finding that Thomas Morley's "O Mistress Mine" (from Shakespeare's Twelfth Night) sounds good picked on it.

Anyway, I start this new year thankful for wife, friends and family (my mum and dad are doing really well considering they are parents of a 101 year old, but I'm not sure if my sister will appreciate being 103 by association!!! :)

Potting...
A lot has happened since I last posted about pots. I have successfully completed a tile commission and the glug glug jug commission, I have also glaze fired several bird jugs and bowls, and have put some more crystalline glazed pots through their glaze firing and their reduction firing. The reduction firing finished at 11.40 last night, so those pots are currently in the kiln cooling.

In a moment I'll post some photos on here, but I first want to say that I'm thinking of the people in the USA that I have "met" through the blog. What with the Eastern side of your country being shaken up a few days ago, and now a hurricane, it has certainly been quite a time, and I hope you are OK.

The thrown fish jug wouldn't glug... not enough room for air in the tail, but Sammy the Silent Sardine made a very useful glaze tester.

The larger coil built fish jug glugs beautifully when water is poured from it, and the people that commissioned it are pleased with it. Really fun to do this, and I hope to make more variations on this theme.

I'm pleased with this one, and like the way the copper glaze worked so well with the slip beneath it. There are also areas of chun blue glaze that I used to give a bit more sparkle and variety.

Chun glaze over dark iron glaze, and it is really nice when that glaze combination works and gives blue! You can see our shed and Post office reflected in this... me too!

An iron red glaze that I have been experimenting with. This gave a pale greenish line where thin over raised decoration, which contrasted well with the red where the glaze was thick.

Always nice to have a hand made bowl for breakfast or for soup, and it is satisfying to make something that a person will use.

An Email from Jill,

2011-08-26T19:25:00.000+12:00

I was delighted to receive an Email recently from Jill Nicholls. Jill has a gallery called Something Special, in Riverton, which is in Southland, New Zealand. I had the pleasure of actually meeting Jill a few months back when she called in and picked up some of my work for her gallery. She proved to be a most intelligent and interesting person; she was an accomplished weaver, and was also refreshingly knowledgeable about pottery, having begun to pot herself in recent years. She also knew about potters that were important to me, such as Bernard Leach, and Michael Cardew. Jill wrote to me to tell me about some new work with clay that she has been doing, and she will be showing 14 examples of her work in an exhibition at Invercargill's Southland Museum from August 26th. Four other artists are taking part in the exhibition, namely Dawn Barry painting, John Wishart photography installation, Phil Newbury glass, Stuart King stainless steel sculpture

Here is an excerpt from Jill's Email

Hello Peter,

Thought you might like to see what I've done with the crackle glaze.

I did test tiles and found Janet de Boos glaze 47, a satin black to which I had added a little beech ash proved to be perfect for my purpose as I also wanted to create big blisters in grey and black. I did this by smearing the crackle back and forth with the brush over the black in a few places. The crackle on the top was very thick as was that surrounding the fissure in the centre.

I am experimenting with distorting the clay in the kiln by putting little blocks of kiln shelf under strategic places where I have induced cracks in the body clay. This is Abbotts Brick Red which I found readily cracks in normal throwing. I coiled the main pot then twisted it when almost leather hard. It was fired considerably hotter than recommended and I almost lost it when it slumped against another tall piece during a rather extended soak but both were able to be ground and recovered. Lots of fun.

One of the benefits of having a blog where I have been prepared to share information about the process of pottery, has been the letters that I have received "behind the scenes" from people like Jill. A few years ago I tested the DeBoos glaze that Jill mentioned, and it looked like a really nice glaze, but I had no immediate use for it. I more recently tested some crackle glazes, and I will, no doubt, use them one day, but not quite yet. I am familiar with the clay that Jill talks about (although I haven't personally experienced cracking problems with it). I use Abbots Brick Red myself when I am making planters and other earthenware pots. It was great to see Jill pull the black glaze, a crackle glaze, and the earthenware clay together and to use them in a way that was quite different to anything I would have done myself. I liked what she did with the firing, pushing the clay to a higher temperature than it was "supposed" to go to and deliberately stressing it by putting little blocks under the sculpture to make it twist when it was at high temperature. Such experiments are valuable ways of testing a material, and are also a good way of taking you out of a personal "comfort zone". The results may challenge beliefs about what clay and glaze should do, and what potters should do, and may open the mind and imagination to further possibilities.

I do like making mugs and bowls, and jugs and teapots, but it is good to keep open the possibility of doing other things with clay. Honestly, when you were a child and first played with nice squishy mud outside somewhere after it had rained, was your first thought, "Ahh, I must make a mug with this stuff!" Or did you enjoy the sticky feel of it between the fingers, and the splishy, splashy noises it would make as you stomped it with your feet? Did you try making monsters or animals, or did you draw in it with a stick?

I wish Jill well with her exhibition, and hope that her work inspires others to experiment, to take risks, and to rediscover imagination.

For those who might be interested....

DeBoos Glaze 47 Cone 3-5 (from Glazes for Australian Potters" J. DeBoos published in 1978 by Cassell Australia)

Nephaline syenite 75

Frit 3110 (4110) 15

Calcite 5

Ball clay QA or C 5

Manganese dioxide 4

Red iron oxide 8

Cobalt carbonate 2

Oxidation: Smooth satin-matt black. Best at cone 4.

Reduction: Not suitable, as it becomes extremely metallic.

Nearly Narnia. Snow... oh, oh!

2011-08-17T19:21:00.000+12:00

Lucy discovers the land of Narnia when she hides in an old wardrobe. One moment she is pushing her way in between old fur coats and other garments, and the next she is tumbling out of the back of the wardrobe into a land that is deep in snow. Of course this all takes place in a children's story by C. S. Lewis, "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe". As a child, I did try to find Narnia through the back of our wardrobe at home, but the plywood back remained firm, and the jackets and trousers on their hangers, tickled my ears and brushed my neck. In the books that concern Narnia, it was mostly children that found the way to that world, although there were some notable exceptions.

I think we found Narnia last Sunday evening, or that it came very close to us. Snow began falling with real purpose through Sunday afternoon, and, by nightfall, there was a good covering of it over everything outside. About 10.30 at night, I wrapped up warmly and took the camera out for what I thought would be a fairly futile attempt at capturing some of the scene by night. The snow made things hazardous, it was a little too wet and turned to ice under foot, but I made my way beside our house to where I could get a view of the snow under our trees; and there was Narnia! The orange glow of a street light made puddles of pale colour on the snow between the trees. The light contrasted with the dark blue shadows and the charcoal grey of the tree trunks. Away from the light, everything merged with a gloom that was so complete that the uncertain lines of branches and trunks seemed to vibrate. What I saw was like the description of that place in Narnia where a gas lamp glows in the depths of a snow covered forest. I found myself looking for Mr Tumnus the fawn, hoping that I would see him stepping daintily amongst the pools of light and shade.

In the morning I did find little footsteps in the snow, but I think they belonged to someone other than a fawn!

That night I took a few photos under the trees, and a photo of Laura's wooden construction that fills in where our side gate should be (the real gate was stolen a few months ago, and I have yet to replace it). Something about the side "gate" reminded me of paintings by the American artist, Edward Hopper (of Nighthawks fame). The black silhouette of the "gate" contrasted with the butter yellow colour of the lamp lit snow. To my joy, the photos actually did turn out with a little "tweaking" with Gimp (a wonderful free image editor).

In the morning I took a few more photos by daylight of a world that was white. A bitterly cold gale kept my time outside short. We had more snow than the fall of snow we had about three weeks ago, but this snow kept thawing, then building, then thawing again, so it did not accumulate as much as it might have. The main road to Dunedin was blocked Sunday night and most of Monday, so we enjoyed relative peace, but the snow was less friendly than before, and we did worry about the sheep and the new lambs that are starting to appear at this time.

Interestingly, this snow was something of a record setter, as it did snow a little in Auckland in the North Island. Auckland usually enjoys a sub-tropical climate and hardly knows frost or real cold, so snow in the air was a big topic on the 6 oclock news on Monday evening. Indeed there was some debate as to the difference between hail, sleet, and snow, as some unkind commentators had attempted to question the validity of Auckland's claim. Expert opinion had to be summoned to settle things! According to records, Auckland last enjoyed snow on 27 July, 1939 (see Auckland in wiki under the heading, "climate"). In a world that is beset with so many woes, it is refreshing to see that a sprinkling of snow in a mostly warm city can grab headlines!

On the potting front... I am currently firing a test fish jug and some other pots and glaze tests. I want to be certain that I get the glaze right for the coil built fish jug, so I am doing this firing to make sure that I know what I am doing!

Glug-glug!

2011-08-13T14:59:00.001+12:00

A couple recently visited with a sad tale of woe, a very special jug that had been sent over from the UK had arrived in pieces. They made emergency repairs to the unfortunate thing so that it could at least be used, but it was never really the same! The jug in question was unwrapped and placed on my table. Shaped in the form of a fish, the jug was designed to entertain as well as to pour! To demonstrate this, water was fetched, and the jug filled. Whilst being emptied, a pocket of trapped air in the tail of the fish made a satisfying glug-glug sound, and when brought back upright, the remaining water in the jug glug-glugged again merrily as it trapped and compressed more air. What fun! I was asked if it would be possible for me to make something similar to replace it.

I realised straight away that a form like this would have its own challenges, but I said I would give it a try and see how I got on.

There seemed to me to be two alternative approaches that I could take. The first was to make most of the jug on the wheel, the second was to build it entirely by hand by pinching and coiling clay.

I ended up trying both methods. The wheel method was definitely faster, but I got a better result by hand building.

Throwing a fish on the wheel!
I first centred some clay on the wheel, and opened it out to form a doughnut shape with a hollow centre. I pulled the clay up into a tall tapering shape that was open at the bottom and closed at the top. It looked a bit like a straight cow's horn at this stage. Carefully, with the wheel stopped, I progressively eased the top over until I could join the tip of it to the side of the cylinder, forming a loop. I smeared the clay at the joint to make the beginnings of a tail. The following day, when the clay had stiffened a little, I was able to add a slab of clay to the piece to form a base. After that I could turn everything over and build the head out of the wide end and add detail to the tail in the thin part that joined back to the side of the cylinder. Once all that was complete I added the detail to the head and textured the body to form the scales. I used a little wooden tool for this and did the scales one by one, I think that if I was to make many of these fish I would make a set of clay stamps or rollers that added the scale textures when pushed into the clay. This would make the job much faster, but would take some time initially to prepare.

The thrown fish was more or less OK, but I was concerned that I had the clay just a little thick. In order to be able to loop the clay over, a reasonable thickness of clay had to be left in the initial cylinder to allow for the stretch of one side and the compression of the other. In addition I felt like the little fish was a bit short in stature!

A fish from Coils!
Building by coiling and pinching clay was slower, but gave me far more control. The much larger fish that I made feels light and well balanced.

I started by making the base, and then progressively worked upwards making the twin forms of the tail and the main body of the fish at the same time. Every so often I would use a small gas torch to firm up the clay lower down so that I could keep on building without the fish slumping, thickening, or collapsing. It took me all of an afternoon to build the basic structure this way, and a morning to do the decoration of it, but I am happy with the way it is looking so far. Currently the jug is in the kiln cooling after bisque firing, so I really hope that it has come through the firing intact. The fish will shrink in this firing and its later glaze firing, and should end up just a little bit bigger than the damaged jug.

The dilemma that I always encounter when doing any one-off commissioned work is that it seems almost impossible to make much of a financial return for the hours that have been swallowed up (and this is not intended as a criticism of my clients!). However, looking at it in another way, the return that I get on my investment of money spent on clay, glaze materials, and firing, is far more than if I had left the money in the bank! To charge at a rate that any other professional person would charge would make things completely unaffordable for the client, and I would probably get no commissions at all, which would be disastrous.

There always have been benefits of doing commissions that go beyond the financial ones, in my case, as a potter who has not served an apprenticeship with another potter or attended a course of study, such commissions stretch me and improve my skills. There is also a very real blessing of building relationships with others. Many of our very dear friends first came to us as clients.

Waikouaiti Lagoon

Another firing... More oil drip reduction pots, and something rather special!

2011-07-31T17:01:00.000+12:00

I was doing an oil drip reduction firing at the time that I wrote my last post. Happily this was another really good firing, so here are some photos of pots from that.

Vase H 170mm x W 180mm (6 3/4 x 7 1/8")

The kiln was in reduction for 2 hours rather than the three of the first firing, and I finished reduction about 20 degrees higher than the time before.

Vase with copper coloured crystals H 300mm x W 220mm (12" x 8 3/4")

Both the pots and the kiln were much cleaner than after the first attempt.

Bottle H 230mm x W 150mm (9 1/8" x 6")

Finishing reduction at a slightly hotter temperature gave more chance to burn off excess carbon from the pots and the kiln. So there was very little cleaning to do when I unloaded. In the first firing, there was a lot of carbon on the kiln walls and on two of the pots.

In my post of July 25th I mentioned that we had a delightful young couple stay with us recently. On their last morning here, Jean-Francois and Yuka brought out a selection of interesting musical instruments and played them. I made a little video at the time, and thought that you might enjoy seeing it too. Featured are a Didgeridoo, a drum from Egypt, two types of Jew's harps, and some rattles from Africa.

It's about Atmosphere: electric firing with cooking oil drip reduction.

2011-07-29T22:33:00.001+12:00

Titanium white pot fired in reduction.

Just after sundown, a clammy fog rolled in and covered the village. It blotted out the church spire altogether, and even people still brave enough to walk the narrow stone pavements reduced their speed. Footfalls were muffled, the street lights became dim and haloed, and the chill, damp air seemed to catch in the back of the throat.

This was a copper green pot, now copper red through the oil drip reduction firing.

It is all about atmosphere! Sunshine, wind, fog, darkness, make us feel different moods, from bliss to terror! In the kiln, atmosphere can dramatically change the appearance of a pot. Give it oxygen, and the colours will probably be brighter and clearer. Starve the kiln of oxygen, and introduce some carbon monoxide, and the pots will have an entirely different mood and may turn dramatically different colours!


The two front pots were pale green and ivory white before reduction firing, and the two at the back share the same glaze. The white one is oxidized, and other is fired in a reduced atmosphere!

In a wood fired kiln or gas kiln, it is possible to control the atmosphere whilst firing. Just adding a little more fuel than can be easily burnt will deplete the kiln of oxygen. An electric kiln normally doesn't offer that choice. You switch the thing on, the elements glow, and the kiln atmosphere will be mostly neutral to oxidizing, depending what you have in it. Of course some of us like to experiment. Potters have done all sorts of things, including firing gas or oil burners into electric kilns, or dropping in moth balls, sugar cubes, or thin sticks of wood. In a regular electric kiln this can be hazardous, hard on the kiln elements, and not always reliable.

Rutile glaze, first an ivory white in oxidation, now soft green and purple in reduction.

I have been playing with re-firing crystalline glazed pots in reduction atmospheres (reduction refers to reduced oxygen). My first experiments were with a small wood fired kiln that I made for the job. Some of the pots from these firings were lovely, others were not, but it was an interesting and exciting way of working. See my post "Crystals in the smoke!" for some photos of wood fired crystalline pots. A few days ago I did my first cooking oil drip reduction firing in an electric kiln with some crystalline glazed pots, and the results were very successful.

What happens when an artist's easel, a lawnmower petrol tank, a short length of tubing and a kiln get together in a confined space!

My equipment for the firing was fairly eccentric looking. An old lawnmower petrol tank was attached to an artist's painting easel. From the tank a piece of clear flexible tubing led to a metal pipe, and this entered a ceramic tube which in turn entered the kiln through a spy hole. The clear tubing had a home made adjustable clamp on it to control the flow of oil. Inside the kiln was an unglazed stoneware shallow bowl with a round piece of insulating fire brick in it. The oil was directed to drip onto the insulating fire brick. Immediately below where the tube entered the kiln I cut a slice of insulating brick and used it to protect the kiln elements to prevent any chance of oil dripping directly onto them.

Oil drip reduction fired copper glazed pot from the top.

The firing was quite simple, just a question of taking the kiln up to about 800 Celsius (1472 Fahrenheit) , switching it off, then adjusting my cooking oil drip apparatus to give approximately one drip of oil per second through the tube into the kiln, and keeping that going until the kiln had cooled to about 600 Celsius (1112 F).

Copper glazed pot. The mild looking reduction was sufficient to turn this not just red, but also quite metallic looking.

I did undertake the exercise with considerable care as I have only read about this procedure and have not seen it done. I changed out of the polyester jacket I was wearing and put on cotton overalls, and I kept not one, but two small fire extinguishers within easy reach just outside the shed door. Some of you will know from cooking, just how dramatic a cooking oil fire can be, and I wanted to be able to make sure that it was possible to keep one under control if something went horribly wrong.

I was tempted to give this a reduction firing, but like it too much as it is. This pot reminds me of the recent snow that we have had here.

As a wood firer, I was intrigued to see just how little visible smoke was seeping from the top bung of the kiln, and I did wonder if the oil drip would be sufficient, but I am happy to say that the results were dramatic!

Here is a close up of the pot with the rutile glaze fired in reduction.

In the first firing I kept up the oil drip for three hours. In the firing that I am doing as I write this, the drop in temperature is much faster, and I will be shutting off the oil drip after two hours. It will be interesting to see if there is any noticeable difference in the way the pots look.

Cold Feathers From a Big Bird, and a little walk to the lagoon!

2011-07-25T22:25:00.000+12:00

Dear All,

It has been such a long time since I last posted that there is really too much to say! The temptation is to sit at the keyboard, give a hopeless groan or two, throw up the hands in an attitude of surrender, then rush off towards the kitchen in search of coffee! What I will do this time is "fast forward" to what has happened today, and I will try to cover some of the last week or two in the next post.

Nigella the cat is puzzled. She likes birds. If she could, she would like to catch birds. Big birds, the larger the better! Nigella is puzzled because she thinks that a very, very big bird has been caught somewhere by The Very Big Cat up in the sky, and now the big bird's feathers are floating down. Nigella sits on the window sill, watching the feathers spinning, whirling, and darting in the breeze. Nigella did catch a very small bird just the other day and scattered its feathers all around the kitchen, but she is amazed by the bird that the Very Big Cat must have caught, because its feathers are now turning everything outside white. The grass is white, the street is white, even the tops of the bushes are white. And it is so cold out there, so very, very cold!

Nigella has not seen snow before so she does not understand what snowflakes are. When she walks outside she decides that she did not like snowflakes much at all, as in stead of being warm and soft like feathers, they are cold and wet like rain.

We took a little walk with the camera first thing this morning, and Nigella made excuses and spent most of the day indoors!

Outside it was lovely and quiet with few vehicles on the road, and the snow was powdery and compressed beneath our feet with a satisfying squeaky crunches as we walked.

Little lumps and bumps disappear under snow. The texture of what is familiar changes. Clad with a coat of white light and blue shadow, what is common place becomes art!

It was beautiful and very cold at the lagoon. Some of the water was frozen with a slushy layer of ice that ducks, swans and geese had forced passages through like icebreakers.

I must end this now as is time to get some sleep, but, if they are reading this, I would like to say a big hello to two travellers, Yuka and Jean-Francois, who visited us a week ago. A "ten minute" visit turned into a two night stay, and our home was made cheerful with their delightful company.

On the Wheel Again! Bird Jugs... and a misshap.

2011-07-10T17:55:00.001+12:00

There is a lot that I could say about this week just past, but I will do most of this post with pictures! I did spend one day early in the week throwing big half globe shapes on the wheel, a third of a 20 kg bag of clay per half globe. The globe halves were thrown as bottomless cylinders, and then the top of the cylinder was progressively collared inwards until they were able to be sealed off as a half globe (another way of looking at it was that the process was like throwing a bowl upside down and working from the rim to the centre). Working with a large amount of clay for a change gave me a bit more confidence in my throwing skills. I had a sculptural project in mind, which did not progress quite as I hoped, but I did make two globes from the halves, and then turned one complete globe into the big, heavy, vase that is in the first photo. The other half globes I will use as slump moulds after they have been bisque fired.

A little later in the week, these fellows started appearing in my studio. Bird jugs.

A disaster got me started on the jugs, but it was good to be doing them again, and the big globe throwing at the beginning of the week significantly improved my abilities when it came to making the jugs. Bird jugs are a moderately challenging shape, due to the wide belly and tall, narrow neck that is required. Also they do need to be light enough in weight to be potentially useful for carrying liquids. I spent quite a lot of time the day after throwing them, doing the detail work and attaching the handles. It was funny really, but a friend had called part way through day one, and was rather surprised at how quickly pots were made on the wheel, but I think she would have been surprised in opposite way if she had visited the next day and seen just how long some of the other processes can sometimes take!

I did mention a "disaster"...., here are two clues, "bird jugs" and the photo just below...

The nature of "disaster"?....

I am making a series of bird jugs so that I can offer a replacement to a client who bought one from me, left it here in my safe keeping and..... Nigella Stopit let herself into my studio one afternoon, and was stuck in there for a couple of hours without me knowing it. It would appear that she entertained herself by climbing onto my highest shelves and knocking one rather important jug on the floor.

I understand that cats taste like rabbit or chicken! At times like this I do wonder if we should be assessing little Miss Stopit in terms of her food value!

Whilst you ponder that, here is a wrap up of some of the rest of the week....
I can report that this week I have been making more tiles.
Laura and I managed to get to see a local wearable art show last night.
Today (Sunday) saw me racing into town with some pots that were destined to be included in a lunchtime exhibition at the Otago University. Nancy Earth, a PHD student, had recently interviewed 4 Otago potters (Neil Grant, Marion Familton, Jo Howard, and myself), and gave a short lecture about us, and some of the ways Japanese pottery has influenced what we do here in New Zealand.

What Potters do on Sundays!

2011-06-29T21:47:00.003+12:00

There is a time in the morning, on a Sunday morning, when it is peaceful. That peace is welcome, and, as is the habit of peace, it arrives without a fanfare.

Test tile with dark blue glaze and chun overglaze

The Sunday peace has something to do with an absence of noise, a lack of motion, a sense of not much going on. It could be that point in the weekend where shoppers have "dropped", where party goers have "crashed", and people making a journey "away" for the weekend have finally got "away", for a few hours anyway, before making the drive home again.

Test tile with Hoheria leaves

The peace could also be the legacy of Sundays past, The Lord's day, where washing was not hung out, where lawns were not mowed, where children behaved, and where the servants sometimes had a half day off!

The Peace described above would seem to be rather bound up with the idea of doing without, with stopping something, or with silence. Fortunately, as I am a busy person, I have found that there are times when there is such a thing as "Active Peace", a Peace that comes by doing something. I frequently find that variety of peace when making a pot, or a series of pots, on the wheel. The act of centering clay, pulling the clay up, thinning, and shaping it, is a bit like slow, controlled breathing. There is some physical effort, then the effort is gradually changed into a controlled gentleness as the pot rises. As the hands reach the top of the revolving clay, they are most lightly removed, so as not to disturb it.

Last Sunday morning you would have found me sitting quietly on the veranda of the little hut that I built. Either side of me were lined bisque fired bowls that had just come out of the kiln and were needing to be got ready for their glaze firing. And I sat in the winter sunshine carefully rubbing down any rough, sharp, or dubious bits from the bowls with a little bisque fired piece of clay that I find useful for this job (a Christmas decoration that I started to make one year...).

As I worked I enjoyed the sound of the birds, and the movement of air, feeling the fresh chill of it on my skin, I thought about many things, about friends, about the blog, about potting, about people in church, and about some perceptive and sensible words from the Apocrypha that I came across many years ago. "..the artist and the craftsman"...."when they do their work, it is the same as offering prayer." Ben Sira 38:27,33

A potter, who wants to try and scrape together some sort of a living, has to work nearly all the time, it is the same today as it was when Ben Sira was written. Clay is a living thing, and kilns can seem to be too, with their own rhythm and pace. Sometimes, to keep up with an order, long days are necessary, or even an all-nighter! Sunday turned into a 12 and a half hour day, followed by an almost all-nighter firing the electric kiln which was going so slowly between 1.30am and 3am that I was out in the kiln shed at 2.30am testing kiln elements to see if one bank of them had failed. An anxious and wakeful night with a kiln that contained many hours of work, and a commission that had to come out right.

Happily we did have an evening off on Saturday night... we were invited out to our friends Mark and Rhonda, who had two lovely friends staying with them. The evening was to be a shared meal followed by.... Karaoke! Now, I have consumed many shared meals in my time, and love them, but I have never tried Karaoke..., and the thought of grabbing a microphone and, um..., singing, was just a little terrifying.

As it turned out.. it is amazing how much fun and laughter 6 people can have with a couple of microphones, some music, and lots of gentle humour. Some of the singing was even really good...! We should press a clay record or something... I even was persuaded to dust off my ukulele...

photo by Rhonda

I am so thankful for our friends, and for laughter!

I am happy to report that the set of iron red bowls that I was making as a commission have turned out well and were sent away by courier today. On the way to completing them, I learned some interesting things about iron red glazes and the way that the colour of the glaze can be affected greatly by managing the cooling of the kiln. Certainly, a temperature hold for 45 minutes at 950 Centigrade (1742 F), really did assist the development of a good red colour in both iron red glazes that I fired this week.

Six bowls awaiting dispatch!

The six bowls were glazed with Bailey's red (recipe in my previous post). The glaze behaved itself very well, and achieved a better red than before. In the previous test this glaze tended to come out as almost equal little dots of red and green, almost looking greener than red when put on a bit thin. The 45 minute hold at 950 Centigrade (1742 F) that I added when the kiln was cooling gave time for the iron in the glaze to re-oxidise, and for iron crystals to grow slightly larger, whilst still leaving a few little dots of green that kept the glaze lively.

Bailey gives a nice red, and some extra interest around the rim with a darker tone coming through.

PTM, great rim, ... interesting, but some problems at cone 9.

PTM (recipe in previous post) was rich and interesting, but had some problems at cone 9, being happier on the slightly cooler bottom shelf of the kiln.

PTM from the bottom shelf.

The change of colour at the rim of the bowls was dramatic, but the bowls that were hottest tended to develop too much of a pool of darker glaze in the bottom. This was visually just about OK, but I have noticed that the glaze has started to craze in this region. Probably this glaze would suite cone 8, but can certainly be dramatic at cone 9. For this firing I cut back the Dolomite in the PTM recipe, so it is 8 percent rather than 11. To fire a bowl at this temperature, you would have to make sure that the inside glaze was not allowed to get too thick when it was applied. The glaze would be really good on the outside of things that have some texture as it "breaks up" well.

A foot note.... (I wonder what sort of a note does a foot makes?? Traa...Laaaa..!)

The Apocrypha
Sometimes I am tempted to think that the best writing is to be found in the Apocrypha rather than in the Bible. The Apocrypha is a collection of books that roughly cover the period of time between the Bible's Old and New Testament. It does also overlap them somewhat. For reasons which are quite varied, these books are mostly left out of the collection of books that form the Bible, (Apocrypha means "hidden away"). Some Christian denominations include these books, some disagree as to which ones to include, others ignore them altogether, which is a shame really.

Artists such as Rembrandt were clearly very familiar with the stories that are in the Apocrypha, and several of his paintings are based on them. Tobias and the Angel, being one. Whoever wrote the apocryphal book Ben Sira, really understood craftworkers, and their long and difficult hours.

Tobias and the Angel at the River Tigris by Rembrandt. (Image from here.)

"It is the same with the artist and the craftsman, who work night and day engraving precious stones, carefully working out new designs. They take great pains to produce a lifelike image, and will work far into the night to finish the work. It is the same with the blacksmith at his anvil, planning what he will make from a piece of iron. The heat from the fire sears his skin as he sweats away at the forge. The clanging of the hammer deafens him as he carefully watches the object he is working take shape. He takes great pains to complete his task, and will work far into the night to bring it to perfection. It is the same with the potter, sitting at his wheel and turning it with his feet, always concentrating on his work, concerned with how many objects he can produce. He works the clay with his feet until he can shape it with his hands; then he takes great pains to glaze it properly, and will work far into the night to clean out the kiln. All of these people are skilled with their hands, each of them an expert at his own craft. Without such people there could be no cities; no one would live or visit where these services were not available." "Their work holds this world together. When they do their work, it is the same as offering prayer." Ben Sira 38:27-33 Good News Translation.

Iron red glaze recipes and Tenmoku for Cone 9.

2011-06-24T21:24:00.002+12:00

I must firstly apologise to my non-potting readers, this post will be mostly glaze stuff.... recipes and the like! However, there will be pictures! And you might like a bit of a look into the contents of my glaze bucket... seeing as we've been friends this long!

PTM on a pot!

PTM
Potash Feldspar 41
Ball Clay 13
Silica 13
Talc 10
Bone Ash 13
Red Iron Oxide 10

+ Dolomite 11
+ Lithium Carbonate 2

The glaze I know as PTM had its beginnings in a Mike Bailey and David Hewitt recipe that appears in the book, "Clay and Glazes" (edited by Emmanuel Cooper and Eileen Lewenstein). My potter friend, Peter W. had experimented with it a few years back. Peter rounded up all the numbers in the recipe, and accidentally added some dolomite to his test. The result was very promising, and better than the original, so he did a series of tests with increasing amounts of dolomite. I always loved the look of the glaze tests that he did, and borrowed Peter's recipe and tried to replicate Peter's results. My tests looked, OK, the glaze was very nice, but were missing something, and I started to suspect that an addition of Lithium Carbonate might help. A visit to Peter W. confirmed that the original recipe should have had Lithium Carbonate in it. A further batch of glaze was made up, and the tests with added Dolomite and Lithium look very nice indeed.

Close up of PTM with a little brushed on swirl of dolomite and water that provides extra fluxing.

What I like about PTM, is it is a little "wild". It moves and changes colour as it goes from thick to thin. Throwing rings show up well, and close to, or under magnification, the colour is very complex, showing flashes of plum, tomato, blue, orange, and brown.

I also tested Bailey's Red, that I found in John Britt's excellent book, " The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes". Only just now, as I am writing this, do I realise how closely the recipe resembles PTM. The result is quite different though, both in colour and in character.

Bailey's Red fired at cone 9.

Bailey's Red
Custer Feldpar 47 (I used potash feldspar)
Silica 13
Kaolin 13 (I used ball clay to help lower the maturing temperature)
Talc 10.5
Bone Ash 14
Lithium Carbonate 2.5

Red Iron Oxide 8

Close up of Bailey's Red.

Bailey's Red is a lovely glaze, the gloss is even, the colour even too. It is quite interesting up close, being made up of green and red flecks, a bit like looking at a pointillist painting done in two colours. I can see that the red would develop better if the glaze were thicker. The other thing that would almost certainly improve Bailey's (and probably PTM) would be a temperature soak at about 950 degrees Centigrade (1742 F) as the kiln is cooling. This would give a chance for some of the iron to re-oxidise. In the case of Bailey's this would result in less green flecks and more red.

Whilst I think about it.....
Some Recommended Reading.
I have recently been reading all sorts of useful things about the use of iron in glazes, and, for those wanting more understanding of such things, I recommend a look at this article from cone 6 pots iron glazes and achieving red.

Other experiments in this firing were with tenmoku glazes.

Dud mugs make great glaze testers.

One was a Black Tenmoku that I have used when firing to cone 11 or 12 in my wood fired kiln, but have not done much with at a humble cone 9 in the electric kiln.

BTM
Talc 15,
Wolastonite 15,
China Clay 10, (I used Ball Clay)
Silica 15,
Potash Feldspar 55, (I used Nephaline Syenite)
and red iron oxide 8.

Substituting Nephaline Syenite for the Potash Feldspar and Ball Clay for the China Clay should drop the maturing temperature a little, and this is what I tried.

BTM with red iron oxide.

At cone 9 the modified glaze had a satin gloss, that actually was rather nice, but it did not develop its full black and really wanted some more heat to do so, or needs a further adjustment of the recipe. I also tested this glaze with iron sulphate in place of iron oxide. Iron sulphate has the lovely name, crocus martis, and I wanted to compare it side by side with iron oxide in a glaze and see if I could detect a difference.

BTM with crocus martis.

There is one, and it is very subtle, and I find myself preferring the glaze that contains crocus martis, there is just a hint more warmth, and the beginnings of a red/brown change of colour where the glaze is really thin. I also tried the glaze with half the amount of iron, 4 percent, to see what colour that would give, and was rewarded by a yellow-green brown.

I also fired something that a recipe Peter W. had as Red Tenmoku.

Red Tenmoku.

Not really sure why it gets the name "red" as the glaze is a very dark brown to black usually. This matured very well at cone 9, and is a very presentable dark brown glaze with a slight reddish "break" at the rim of a mug where the glaze is thin.

Red Tenmoku
Potash Feldspar 50
China Clay 10
Whiting 5
Dolomite 15
Silica 30
Red Iron Oxide 8

Both the black and the red tenmoku glazes are good candidates for use as an under-glaze when doing chun type glazes.

Footnote...
Tenmoku, Temmoku, there are various spellings for this glaze. As to the meaning of the word, "the eye of heaven" is the meaning that I have heard most often, but I will leave you with a link to a site that has several more explanations of the word... Tenmoku meanings.

Errata..... I tried to post a little video on this, but had to take it off again as the sound got messed up "somewhere in the cloud"!

The Moon went all funny! Hick! Bowls, glazes, and electrical wizardry!

2011-06-21T20:35:00.003+12:00

Many a person weaving their way home from the pub late on a starry night has difficulty counting the number of moons in the sky. Of course it is not their fault.... It would help if the moon stayed still, which is doesn't... And it would certainly help if it remained the colour of a good Stilton cheese. After all, cheese and Guiness, Lager or Stout, is a match made in heaven! So the moon should be the colour of cheese, no matter if there is one moon or if there are two... Hick!

The moon has become unreliable lately. Recently it was decidedly hung over between 6 and 7 in the morning. A shadow crept slowly over it, and the happy bright yellow light gave way to a sombre pinkish- grey. It wobbled off amongst the trees, then disappeared over the horizon, looking very much the worse for wear. I hope the moon recovers soon.

All a bit apocalyptic down here, what with the moon the colour of an elderly canned salmon and the South Island's biggest city being rocked by earthquakes. Now we have a further portent of doom, at least to the profits of the airlines, in the form of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. The ash is a little gift from Chile. Both Qantas and Jetstar refuse to fly when New Zealand is under an ash cloud, but Air New Zealand seem to keep on grinding away at lower altitude. Maybe it is a case of local knowledge that allows our national carrier to keep on flying when its overseas competitors are grounded, or is it that they have a fleet of rubber powered wind up aircraft that they wheel out when the ash is bad...? ! I am not sure if the bubble rising in my chest is one of pride, or fear...! But, hey, if they are piloted by locals, they'll probably know where the farm airstrips are in case they have to put their Boeings down for a precautionary landing.

In addition to doing yet more glaze tests... on Thursday and on Saturday, I managed to make some bowls on the potter's wheel (Friday and Sunday I turned foot rings of the bowls that I had made the day before). The bowls are mostly soup bowls or generous breakfast bowls, of the sort that might be nice to use on a cold winter's day when you want a good quantity of something hot to "stick to the ribs!" I am talking "comfort food" here, and I kept that thought in mind as I made the bowls, making 30 of them deep, generous, curvy, and with a good turned over rim. Whilst I did not slavishly throw them all the same, I did make them in "families", out of the same weight of clay, and to the same diameter. I also did 8 bowls in a different style, much plainer and deeper, with no turn over to the rim.

It was nice working on the wheel, a reminder of why I do potting really.

I have been putting together some more glazes for testing, some glazes for the bowls, in particular two iron reds, and a tenmoku glaze, and I did some refinements and colour variations to glazes that I am probably going to use on the tiles. Testing is a wearisome thing, and I do have to exercise quite a lot of will power to make myself work through a nine hour day of weighing, sieving, measuring, applying, and documenting a kiln load of tests. I did a day like that yesterday, and was happy to walk out of my studio at 6.15pm and have a nice relaxing evening with my friend Peter W. in front of the television where we watched a video of World Cup Football (soccer), Spain vs Germany. We do this one Monday evening every month, and are slowly working through last year's games. I did sleep for some of the first half (as did some of the players ... apparently!!), but I managed to stay awake for the second half and for Spain's wonderful match deciding goal!

Today I loaded up the kiln and prepared it to do a glaze firing. I also stacked some of the half dry bowls on top of it to take advantage of the heat. After I switch on the kiln I usually linger for a minute or two and check that each bank of elements is cycling on and off as it should. Being a natural born pessimist, I don't take these things for granted! Listening and watching the kiln is a useful habit to cultivate when driving an elderly kiln like mine, and I suspect it is a good habit even if you are firing one of those modern newfangled computer driven beasts. On two previous occasions, my minute or two lingering beside the kiln at the beginning of the firing has saved me trouble later on, and today was another example of this. I discovered that the middle bank of elements were on full, but were not switching off again as they should. The middle simmerstat switch had gone bad. Over the years the top and the bottom switch have been replaced, and I had wondered when the middle one's turn would come. Fortunately I had a spare switch (I had bought two of them when I replaced the lower switch several months ago).

Pulling Things Apart..... Safely
Replacing the switches on an electric kiln is not something that you should attempt if you cannot understand wiring diagrams. If those neat schematic lines, numbers, and wiggly bits, mean nothing at all to you no matter how hard you try to make sense of them, get qualified help! The thing is, if you make a mess of the wiring, and make the kiln unsafe, you could kill yourself, or someone that you love. My father, an ex-physics teacher, replaced the first simmerstat switch on this kiln when that went wrong, and I was able to look over his shoulder and get some idea of what to do. When it came time to replace the second switch by myself, I took the old one apart and compared it with the wiring diagram, so that I could be sure how it worked before I hooked up the new one. This was because the new one looked very different than the ancient one that it was replacing.

The very first thing to do was to turn off the kiln. First the switch on the kiln, then the switch on the wall, and finally the circuit breakers on the fuse box.

After I removed the metal cover on the side of the box on the kiln where all the electrical wizardry is gathered, I took a photo or two with the digital camera. I do this whenever I am faced with a job like this before I touch anything. It is so easy to forget which wire went where when you have disconnected a few of them, or if you drop something.

I placed the new switch beside the old one, and tried to figure out where the wires should go. The new switch was quite different looking to the old one, which is probably 30 years old, so I was very careful to look at the wiring diagram and I looked at an old pulled apart switch that I had kept from the last time I had to do this job. I examined the wiring to the other switches, and made sure I understood the logic of the connections before I undid anything.

As I started to disconnect the old switch I also took advantage of the opportunity to look around at the condition of the other connections. I discovered one connector where the insulation looked like it had got hot. A careful waggle of the wire showed that the connector was slightly loose, enough for the joint to heat up. I was able to tighten that connection, and replace another which looked worse.

When I was quite sure that I knew how to connect up the new switch, I made all the connections, and fixed the switch back in place. I left the cover plate off the switch box so that I could observe things, from a distance, when the power was switched on again.

I reset the circuit breakers on the main fuse box, then put on rubber gloves before switching on the kiln. Yes, really! I am not an electrician, so I know that I can make mistakes, and rubber gloves could help prevent me getting electrocuted! (The rubber soled shoes that I had on were also a good idea too!). Anyway all went well, the kiln hummed into life, nothing exploded, melted, or produced black oily smoke! I switched off again, replaced the cover, and was able to continue the firing. Now the kiln is happily nearing the peak of the firing of the glaze tests and tiles as I write this.

I suspect that many potters have to fix things that they are not really qualified to do, simply out of economic necessity, it is hard to make ends meet as a potter, so I have written the no doubt "boring" account above in the hope that it might help you minimise some of the risks.

Now I must away.... and check the kiln!

Saturday to Wednesday, a bit busy.... but here are more glaze testers!

2011-06-15T22:41:00.005+12:00

Saturday was glaze test day. In the manner of great and famous chefs, I was stirring, sieving, adding pinches of this and that, and hoping that the "flavour" would come out just right! The tests were partly for the tile commission that I am working on, and also some others that I am trying to develop.

This is a glaze for something sculptural. Magnesium carbonate shrinks madly as it is being fired. If you make a simple glaze with equal parts of Magnesium carbonate and Nepheline Syenite and put it over another glaze, you can get effects like the ones above. I fired all the tests on this post to Orton Cone 9, or 1255 Centigrade (2291 Fahrenheit).

Sunday was packing and firing the glaze tests in the electric kiln, doing a little work in the shed, and being around in case someone visited the gallery.

The glaze that I tested on the cup in this photo makes this lovely optical blue when put over a dark iron rich glaze.

Monday was power tools, sawdust, and the construction of another work bench for the shed.

I like to test glazes on "real" pots or mugs as soon as I can. Flat surfaces are OK at first, but you soon need something with some verticals to see how much a glaze will move. This pot shows me a dark and light version of the same glaze, and also reveals the behaviour of the glaze when it overlaps the glaze that I have used inside the pot.

Tuesday I unpacked the test tiles first thing, and got the kiln ready for a bisque firing. The phone rang just as I was about to load the kiln, and someone from of the local primary schools asked very nicely if I could fire some little clay pigs for them that the pupils had made.

The timing was good as I had lots of room in the kiln, so I got them to deliver the pigs right away.

I had to do a careful operation on each pig, as they had been made hollow, but no holes had been put in them to allow for steam and air to get out as they were being fired. Without the operation, there would have been a dozen or so loud explosions in the kiln, and the pigs would have become little porcine hand grenades! As a precaution I also put the pigs into a *sagger that I had made some time before, and put a lid loosely on it, so that small pig fragments would not fly around the inside of the kiln if one did blow up. I also put a kiln shelf between them and the tiles that I was bisque firing!

This is one of the glazes that I am testing for the tile commission. I needed to see how it would work over incised detail, and I have been fine tuning its maturing temperature and trying to make it a little more lively and interesting. The mug, with its strong throwing lines, showed me how the glaze would pool and thin when moving over slight obstructions, and the detail in the "medallion" shows well through the thick glaze.

Whilst the kiln was starting to heat up, I photographed the test tiles.

I then travelled through to Dunedin on the local bus to join Laura looking after the Stuart Street Potter's Co-op for the rest of the day. Once home we went out to a talk that was given by a local artist, Juliet Novena Sorrel, about sketch books. Juliet was charming and had a delightful attitude towards making art. The whole process sounded natural and fun. Juliet illustrated her talk with photos of sketchbooks that are part of the Hocken Library collection in Dunedin, but also brought examples of her own sketchbooks, and very generously handed them around for us to look at. In spite of Laura and I both feeling "all in" after rather a long day, we both enjoyed the evening very much.

I tested this glaze over incised decoration. I filled the lines of the tile on the left with a wash of manganese, and wiped the rest of the tile clean before dipping the tile in glaze. The tile on the right has nothing in the lines, and they are hard to see.

The kiln took all day to gently steam out its small farm and tiles, so I fired the kiln through the night, and had to get up to check on progress a few times. Around 5am, a very strong wind got up, and I had to keep reasonably alert, because we sometimes have power cuts when there are gales. Just a power outage for a second will cause my kiln to switch off, and it doesn't come on again by itself.

This is an iron red glaze. The wiggly line along the top was made by mixing some dolomite with water and applying it with a watercolour brush to the freshly glazed tile. The dolomite adds extra flux to the glaze, and really livens things up. The lower wiggle was a brush stroke of the same glaze that I used on the tile on the right in the previous photograph.

Today intended to throw some mugs and bowls, clean kiln shelves, and get some other things done, but I ended up mostly sorting out raw materials for glazing. I had a storage problem that had got completely out of control, and realized that my little work space was no fun any more! Glaze materials are best kept in plastic lidded containers (Plastic! .... A potter recommending it ...., what ever next!). Trouble was that I have been so busy over weeks/months that materials have just tended to stay in their original packaging, and my storage shelves have been a nasty unhealthy jumble of dusty plastic bags and odd glass jars. Not good to let it get like that, but... there we are, the truth is out!! It all took several hours to tame, groom and organise, but it is much better now. Tomorrow I won't know the place when I unpack the kiln and start to glaze tiles and pots!

This glaze is the same on the inside and on the outside of the cup.... but, what a difference! I had a simple liner glaze on the inside of the cup, and glazed over it. The combination of the two glaze bases really brings out the blue colouration from the cobalt that is in the glaze.

Well, that's me done! I'll just add some photos and post this.

This very quiet glaze is a "rutile blue" glaze... Well, it probably would be blue if fired in a reduction atmosphere in a fuel fired kiln. In the electric kiln, it fires an interesting off white with hints of blue.

We are all thinking of the people in Christchurch who have been affected by more earthquakes over the last few days. This latest shake up will mean that many will probably never be able to return to their homes, but will have to relocate. Laura did feel Monday's 6.3 (that was centred near Christchurch) and came outside a little wide eyed and worried, carrying a cat under one arm, but I did not feel the quake at all as I was in my little shed using a power tool.. Probably the shed is much safer than our old brick building anyway... maybe we will move in their permanently!

*Sagger (also saggar): a pot that looks a bit like a cake tin. Pots that may need to be protected whilst they are being fired can be put in a sagger. This was often the case when kilns were fired with coal and glazes could be sensitive to the sulphurous smoke or direct contact with the fire.

Added on 16 June for those who might be interested in a glaze recipe.
The Recipe for the Dark Blue glaze that is on the mug and the medallion tester.
The recipe started life as one that I found in "The World of Japanese Ceramics" by Herbert H. Sanders. (A wonderful book that was first published in 1967, and I enthusiastically recommend it if you can find a copy).
Common Limestone Glaze, Cone 9 - 10
Eureka Spar 49.38
Whiting 14.67
Kaolin 12.09
Flint 23.60
Magnesite 0.26

I have limited ability to pick and choose what feldspar I can get here so I use any Potash Feldspar in place of the Eureka Spar, and also use Magnesium Carbonate in place of the Magnesite. I find it slightly underfired at Orton Cone 9, and have fired it much higher than cone 10 in my wood fired kiln. The book is an old one, and the cones may be Seger, rather than Orton.

In the blue example that I have photographed I have added 5 percent Fritt 4108 (similar to 3134) to lower the maturing temperature, and have 2 percent cobalt carbonate and 3 percent rutile.

The small amount of magnesium in the glaze will act as a flux at cone 9, but it also helps give the glaze a pleasing wax-like feel.

In the Comments section of this post "gz" mentions "Leach 1234". For those of you who are not potting, that probably sounds like code. The recipe is as follows:
Potash Feldspar 40
Silica 30
Whiting 20
Kaolin 10

This makes a very useful base recipe for stoneware temperatures, and is slightly milky to clear at cone 9, depending on thickness.

Sheds, Beginnings, Leaf Impressions, Good-bye Limpy... Hello Ginger!

2011-06-09T20:41:00.002+12:00

I have spent a merry day or two in my new shed making tiles. It is hard to put into words just how nice it is to be working again..., and out there! There were times when I was building the shed when I wished that I wasn't, and wondered if it all had been a costly mistake, but the shed is a grand place to be and it takes me back to my first enjoyable days of potting where I went on an almost daily basis to a friend of mine, Peter Watson, who was potting in an old stable.

The Stable that became a Potting Shed.

A water colour that I did at a time when my parents owned the property.

The stable had one of those lovely doors that was in two parts (a stable door in fact!), and you could open just the top half and have a lovely view into the garden where vegetables and flowers grew in profusion under a leafy canopy provided by a large ash tree. Peter and Judy kept an eccentric gaggle of hens, that were several sizes and colours. One of them, Grace, was a pretty bantam hen who made up for her diminutive size by having a larger than life personality. I was amused one day to see her head peering over the side of a largish pottery bowl that was on a top shelf in the stable. How she managed to get up there I don't know, but she decided the bowl was her nest, and her skill in getting there was the poultry equivalent of Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's conquest of Everest in 1953. Base camp was the wedging table, a perilous hop may have taken her to Peter's wheel, and then there was the final push, without oxygen, to the shelf many feet above it!

Peter Watson, my teacher and friend.

Potting in the stables was one of those little parts of life that seem for ever bathed in warm sunshine. My contact with clay and a slow turning wheel was a healing one and brought me some peace and balance in my life, and there was something about that stable and the garden that was part of the magic. So now I have my own shed, and it is in our garden, and I made tiles for the last two days with the shed doors open wide, and the sunny and chilly clean winter's air bringing with it a feeling of renewal and life.

I have been making tiles, and using autumn leaves to decorate the tile surface.

Tiles and Autumn Leaves

The level of detail that can be left by the imprint of a leaf is simply staggering. To really appreciate it, here is an enlargement of part of the tile on the right hand side of the photo above. I have reversed the tones in the photo so that you can see the detail more clearly, and almost in relief.

Oak Leaves

I find that it is easy to make an impression from a leaf into leather hard clay.

Hoheria leaves all from the same tree. I could be wrong, but I think that this one is Hoheria Lyallii

I make sure that the clay surface is nice and smooth, and if necessary smooth it with a rubber kidney (that is what the grey thing is in the top part of the photo). I arrange the leaves on the tile and carefully place a board over the top and push it down with my hands.

I roll over the board with a small roller, this helps attach the leaves to the clay.

After that I remove the board and roll over the clay and the leaves directly with the roller. This pushes the leaves into the surface of the clay.

If you wish to re-use the leaves on another tile, then you can carefully lift them. If you don't need the leaves any more they can stay on the clay and they will burn away in the firing. I like to use a kebab stick to hook under a leaf or stem just to get the lifting started.

I have been adding a simple decorative boarder to these tiles by pressing the kebab stick gently into the clay. A nice translucent glaze should pool in the lines and go a deeper colour.

To help the tiles dry flat, I have been putting them in between squares of gib board (plaster board) so that the moisture is removed from the clay evenly from both sides at once.

Good-bye Mr Limpy!

The good news of the day is that Ginger the cat is very much better. We were still worried enough about him to make a return visit to the vet today. He had been hardly using his painful front leg, and the whole sorry saga had been dragging on for two weeks or so. The vet, who is lovely and very good with him, gave him a very thorough examination, and really tested all the joints of both his front legs and shoulders. His little legs were rotated through their full movement, and the foot of his bad leg checked one pad and claw at a time. His damaged leg was considerably weaker than his good one, but it was very reassuring to see him quite definitely improved from the visit before where he was almost unmanageable at times due to the pain.

A little later in the day we saw him trotting comfortably on all four legs again, and he has been right ever since. I think all the rotating and moving of his joints may have popped something back into place, or freed something up. It is wonderful to have seen the departure of Mr Limpy, and the return of our old friend Ginger!

Tiles, Shed, Bowls, Potter's Co-op & Warming Chilly Regions!

2011-06-07T22:27:00.002+12:00

Making History... And Tiles!
Well, I was in my shed making tiles today, so this day is historic really as the new shed is being used at last! It was nice working out there, really nice in fact, and, whilst the shed lacks many of the "essentials" of modern life, such as heating..., it was a good place to be on a sunny winter's day. Like many other things around here, the shed is still not quite finished..., but the bench that I made works well, as do the few shelves that I have thus far.

Curling Up
Probably the most difficult part of making tiles is drying them. Tiles can enjoy curling up as they dry, they are like a restless spouse who cannot lie still in bed, but wants to toss and turn and steal all the blankets!

Think about... compression!
I decided not to use a slab roller for rolling out the clay, but to use a rolling pin and a little guide that I made, and to roll the clay carefully and progressively, flipping the clay over at intervals and rolling from the other side to compress both sides evenly. If you roll heavily from one side only, the clay will try and roll up like a tube as it dries. It remembers its bad treatment! I also took care to handle the rolled out clay carefully, always supporting it with a canvas backing and not allowing it to stretch unevenly, as it would if you just lifted it with a finger and thumb by one corner.

And drying....
The other thing that I have done to help prevent curling, is to make lots of square boards out of the paper coated plaster board that is used for lining interior walls in houses. It is easy to cut board of this sort just by scoring through the thin paper lightly with a craft knife, and giving the board a quick tweak. The board will snap along the cut, rather like cutting glass. All that remains to do is to cut through the lower paper backing, and, hey-presto, you have a cut off board! I sanded the cut edges of the boards, and cleaned off the plaster dust. It doesn't pay to let clay and plaster dust mix as it can cause problems later when the work is fired.

Make a Sandwich..
After making each tile I put it like a sandwich filling between two plaster boards, and left it to dry. The boards should pull the moisture out of the tile evenly from both sides at once. If you don't use this method, and you leave a tile to dry on a shelf, the top surface will dry out in the air much faster than the underside... and, if you forget to flip the tile over frequently, it will curl up towards the dryer side, because clay shrinks a lot as it dries.

I have put my drying tile sandwiches on wire racks to also help the moisture escape evenly.

It is quite likely that, having done all this and let you know, the tiles will curl up like lettuce leaves as they dry..... We will just have to wait and see!

Glaze Tester....
Last Friday, when I did my "emergency" firing of some bowls in my electric kiln, I put in a test glaze or two. One glaze was a cone 6 glaze that I used in the wood fired kiln the day before. The only thing was, the electric firing was to be cone 9, some 55 or 60 degrees Centigrade (131 - 140 F) hotter than what the glaze was designed for. I just wanted to see what would happen!

The photo above really doesn't do it justice, but I was delighted by the way the glaze responded to the extra heat. The glaze has moved and pulled nicely around the edge of the tile, and has a lovely velvety gloss to it, that feels good. There is also a delightful speckle in the glaze. I will try some tests with more cobalt (this has only 0.5%), and will also make some green versions with copper and with chrome, and see what that looks like. I think that the base for this cone 6 glaze is Marcia Selsor's Waxy White.... I wonder if some of you have used that, and to what temperature?

Warm Bowls...
I unpacked this firing first thing on Sunday morning, and was able to take three of the bowls into Dunedin to Stuart Street Potter's Co-op to use in my window display later the same morning! I think the bowls were at about room temperature by the time I packed them into my car to take to town.

The bowls were also an excuse for testing some glaze combinations. The English Artist, J. M. W. Turner, painted a magnificent picture in 1842, called "Snowstorm. Steamboat off the harbour mouth making signals, and going by the lead. The Author was in this Storm on the night the Ariel left Harwich" (Turner believed in book length titles!). I was reminded of the words that the critics of the day said about this painting when I unpacked this bowl from the kiln.... "it is a mass of soapsuds and whitewash!" I was not displeased, however, in fact I was enormously relieved as I had worried so much about how I had applied the glazes on this bowl that I had come close to washing them all off again and not firing it!

A less busy bowl that worked out quite well was the one below. I applied an almost opaque glaze that had some rutile, copper, and cobalt in it, over a dark iron-rich tenmoko type glaze. I was pleased with how the throwing rings made this combination go light and dark where the glazes pooled and flowed over the wavy surface.

I kept my window display fairly Spartan. I put hand made paper on the wooden floor, and placed just a few bowls and pots on them. I was thinking of them being almost ceremonial in some way...

I included some of my crystalline glazed pots that had been through a further wood firing in a smoky reduced atmosphere, as I thought that these made an interesting combination with the larger bowls.

Busy Bees...
Also on Sunday, there was a working bee at the Potter's Co-op that I was scheduled to take part in. We are progressively re-painting the white plinths that our work is displayed on. It is quite a logistical challenge as the Co-op has something like 60 of these things, and we are open 6 days a week... and paint dries slowly in this cold weather, but teams of 3 members at a time are descending on the Co-op on Sundays and are getting it all done.

Rosemary McQueen is one of the founding members of the Co-op, you can see her doing a merry dance with a paint roller in the photo above. She also has a window display at this time, and her vibrant and exuberant work makes a lovely contrast to my quieter pots. Here are two photos of some of her work.

Below is a photo of the Co-op that I took on Sunday with the place all rather cluttered looking with display stands being painted in the middle of the floor.

The Co-op is a really long space, that is lined with shelves of hundreds of pots by most of our 12 members. There is a lot to look at, and it can take some time to really take in the work that is on show there.

Warming Chilly Regions!
I will conclude this post with a funny photo that I took first thing on Sunday morning when the day was grey and dreary and rain was falling outside. Nigella Stopit decided that there was only one acceptable place for a cat to be, and that was as close as possible to the electric heater. Apparently some regions were feeling chilly at that hour of the day!

A Glaze Recipe
Textured Blue for Cone 6 using Marcia Selsor's Waxy White. Nice Cone 6 wood fired in reduction, really nice tested on something flat electric fired at cone 9.

Nephaline Syenite 30
Fritt 4108 (3134) 20
Talc 17
Whiting 10
China Clay 13
Silica     10

+ Zircon     10
Rutile     3
Cobalt Carbonate     0.5
Copper Carbonate     1.0
Bentonite     2

Vacuumed to cone 6! Pushing the little wood fired kiln where it hadn't been before!

2011-06-04T19:06:00.001+12:00

A truly organised person would have the next two decades of life plotted out by the hour on a wall planner, or keyed into their palm sized electronic gadget, their raspberry... or was it a loganberry, or black currant? Whatever the device was, the truly organised person, I shall refer to them in future as a "TOP", would know on a given Tuesday that the following Sunday required them to be taking part in a Potter's Co-op working bee, and additionally, THAT was the day when a window display of pots had to be put up at the aforementioned Potter's Co-op.

A "TOP" would not, on Tuesday having arrived at the aforementioned Potter's Co-op and having seen a list on the wall, say "Gracious," or "Mercy", or "Help", in a voice pitched higher than usual and modulated by tones of surprise, because nothing would surprise a "TOP". I mean, a "TOP" would have known this, and would have planned for it ages in advance.

I am not a "TOP", in any shape or form, and my life plays out somewhere on the ground floor. I do sometimes write things on paper, and occasionally scribble odd marks on a calendar, if I can find something to scribble with, or indeed, if I can locate the calendar on which to scribble. If these jottings are ever found, then the real meaning of the aide-mémoire is often lost. A crudely circled "10.40pm" on Monday 27th, could refer to the proposed visit of a plumber, giving a talk at a school, or, most likely, the end of the world!

Visceral Panic
Anyway, to return to my exclamation of surprise last Tuesday when I saw that I was to be "in the window" of the Co-op from the following Sunday. Not only did the air reverberate with my discovery, but a little knot of panic began to form at a visceral level. I chanced a nervous glance towards my shelves at the Co-op, blinked, and looked again as I realised that the shelves were looking a little low on stock. There were only really enough pots for the shelves, and nothing left over for putting in the Co-op window as well.

On my return to home sweet home at the end of the day, I glanced at the pots that were in my studio, and tried to imagine groups of them displayed in the Co-op window..... and failed! Aggggh, recent weeks spent building, repairing, re-organising, and doing anything but make pots, had left me short of work.

Ah..Ha, Wednesday
Wednesday morning, some unearthly hour, saw me sit up in bed abruptly, and say, "Ah... Ha!"
Clad only in winter weight sleeping attire, I scuttled through to my studio and pulled several books about glazing from the shelf, and propelled myself back to the comparative warmth of the bed and began researching Cone 6 glazes. Cone 6, or about 1200 C (2192 F), is a glaze temperature that I have rarely explored. Lots of potters fire to that temperature and manage to get stoneware glazes to work for them. I mostly fire 1250 to 1300 C, which is quite a lot hotter.

My unearthly hour, "Ah...Ha!" was prompted by visions of some unglazed pots that I had seen in my studio, that were on mid fire stoneware clay, and a thing that had been gnawing away at me ever since I last fired my small wood fired updraught kiln. Whilst I was certain that my little kiln would never reach 1300 degrees Centigrade, I had a suspicion that the kiln might reach 1200, but had never tested that, and I thought that a quick firing of this kiln might give me one or two pots that I could add to my ones at the Potter's Co-op.

A Question of Sanity
Look, it is crazy, and most "unTOP-like" to put pots with untested glazes in an untested kiln and expect to have work to take to town, but....

... I am not quite crazy, so I also glazed up some large bowls for my electric kiln with glazes that I have at least done preliminary tests on, and I fired those yesterday as my insurance policy!
I will be unloading those first thing Sunday morning, and, with any luck, there will be a bowl or two from that firing for my display.

Now, back to Wednesday. I selected three glazes for the work that was to go in the little wood fired kiln, and spent the morning preparing them, and some of the afternoon applying them to the pots. It was a bit frustrating as I would have liked to have got the pots glazed AND fired on Wednesday, but making glazes always takes much longer than I think it should.

An Early Start
All was ready for first thing Thursday morning, and an early start was made. This time I was dashing around the house in darkness, gathering pots, props, pyrometer, and other paraphernalia, then loading the little kiln by the light of a bedside lamp that was attached to a long extension lead for power.

And.... We're Off!
We made a start at 8am, and built a small fire in the small firebox of the small kiln! (It really is a tiny kiln!). The firing went healthily enough for the first hour, and I handed over to Laura sometime after 9am. She continued the firing whilst I started preparing glazes for the bowls that I was going to fire in the electric kiln. Just after 10am I took a hot drink out to the stoker, and did a little stoking and adjusted air intakes and chimney damper. The temperature was up to 575 C (1067 F) by 10.15am.

At 12.15am, the kiln became more tricky to fire, the pyrometer was showing 960 C (1760F), and the kiln began to feel like it was "running out of puff". This was way short of what I thought the kiln capable of doing, and I was a bit mystified. By dint of careful stoking, the kiln was coaxed to a reading of 1015 C (1859 F) by 1pm, and I was preparing to give up. The pyrometer, I knew from experience, was very inaccurate, and we were probably 60 degrees or more hotter than what it was saying, but we were using lots of fuel, and trying very hard, but were going to be more than 100 degrees short of target.

Oiling the Works
About that time Laura said "what about cooking oil??" and rushed off to the kitchen. Returning with a small bottle of sunflower oil, she applied it to some of the wood and took over stoking. At 1.15pm, powered by sunflowers and Laura's efforts, the kiln had crept up to 1050 C (1922 F) on the pyrometer, and a glimmer of hope opened its fragile wings and fluttered them experimentally in the balmy breeze. A reading of 1050C probably suggested that we were in fact well over 1110 C (2030 F), and were slowly beginning to chase down our target.

A Partial Vacuum
About this time Laura said, "How about the vacuum cleaner?!" I cantered away at speed, and returned with a very old Electrolux that a good friend of ours had given us many years ago. Vacuum cleaners are electrical gadgets that are designed to suck! The Electrolux had the peculiar property of being more effective blowing than sucking, and even came with a neat little spraying system with a little glass bottle and an atomiser to allow the house-holder to respray children's bicycles, second hand furniture, bedroom walls, or even the car. It was the product of the swinging 60s, a time when a real man read Practical Mechanics, and his ideal woman, showed tantalizing glimpses of shapely lower calf whilst expertly preparing healthy meals in her 350 horsepower oven with 5 forward speeds and chromed steam extractor that her man had rewired for her in his DIY basement workshop.

The Electrolux was plugged into the power, and began to emit a jet-like howl as its hose directed a blast of cold air, beetles, spiders, and autumn leaves towards the fire box of the kiln. I hastily arranged bricks around the kiln's under ash pit air intakes to direct the blast from the Electrolux into the firebox, and... away we went.

An hour later cone 4 was down, 1168 Centigrade (2134 F), and cone 6 was softening.
At 2.20pm cone 6 was down which is about 1200 Centigrade ( 2192F). At this point the pyrometer was showing an error of about 80 degrees, but it had done a great job of encouraging us when the temperature was going upwards, and steering us to a temperature where I was then able to judge progress by the cones that I had set in the kiln.

At 2.30pm we switched everything off and closed up the kiln to prevent cold air rushing through it as the fire died down.

I was able to unpack the kiln first thing the next morning.

What did the pots turn out like?

Mmmmmm..... To be honest, I'm not sure that any were quite good enough for the Co-op window. Pots on the top shelf of the kiln were a bit under-fired as the temperature there was only approaching cone 4. In spite of this we got a copper red vase that was fairly acceptable, it would have been more lively if it had got hotter, but it was OK.

There was also a nice little bowl. The bowl had picked up more heat than the vase, and the glaze was more glassy and less like paint!

In the bottom layer of the kiln, where things got to cone 6, there was quite a nice greyish glaze on a vase that had some lively movement and variegation in the glaze where got hottest.

Sadly, this vase was rather let down by the "reliable" glaze that I had put inside it as a liner glaze. This was a glaze that I have used many times before, but it had come out as rough as sandpaper and was discoloured pink in places from volatilised copper from the other glazes.
I have not had this problem before, but this kiln is very small, and any heavy metal that decides to start wafting around at high temperature may well have an effect on other pots.

In Conclusion....
We will have to hope that some bowls have come through the electric firing OK. I will find out tomorrow!

About Cones...

Cones measure heat work. Potters place them where they can be easily seen in the kiln when it is being fired. Carefully formulated from similar materials to what the glazes are made of, cones start out straight, but flop over when a certain temperature is reached. The amount of time taken to reach that temperature has an effect too, and cones usually give the potter a far better idea of what is going on in the kiln than a pyrometer, which merely measures air temperature. These cones have been pushed into clay. The clay acts as a base for the cones, and helps them stand up in the kiln. Just like putting a fork into a baked potato before putting it in the oven, I have pushed holes into the clay to help all the steam get out when it is fired.

Things that go Bump in the night!

2011-05-30T19:58:00.002+12:00

1.10AM: the cat flap thumps open, clatters shut, then crashes open again. There is a slight pause, then a curious "clump, clump, Thud... clump, clump, Thud.....", in waltz time accompanied by the slithering of something very dead being dragged over the lino. A silence, then outside our bedroom door there is a throaty "Yeeooowl!"

Laura stirs sleepily, and I heave myself out of bed, walk barefoot across the cold floor, find the light switch, and fling open the door.

Below knee height, two mad eyes reflect the light from the bedroom, and a striped ginger cat almost merges with the deep shadows in the hall. Beside him, very dead, are the slightly chewed remains of a medium sized grey rat. Ginger has struck again and is particularly pleased with himself, and rightly so, for only a few hours before he was unconscious on the vet's operating table having his left front leg shaved, probed with needles, and X-rayed.

It had been Ginger's second visit to the vet that week, and he was under strict instructions to stay indoors that night whilst he recovered from his anaesthetic. It appears that Ginger was bitten by a rat about a week ago, on one of his night hunting expeditions. A trip to the vet for an examination and antibiotics shortly after he was bitten, seemed hopeful enough, but he made little progress in the days that followed, and had to return to the vet for further investigation.

Currently Ginger is taking pain killers once a day, a 10 day slow release antibiotic injection is still at work in his system, and he is only using 3 of his four legs, hence the unusual waltz time progress that he makes. I have nick-named him "Mr Limpy", and he has two speeds, dead slow, and a surprisingly fast cantering gait. Speeds in between these two are almost impossible for him, as he tends to lose balance. In spite of the injury, it appears that

Ginger can still fly. I saw him sunbathing on the kiln shed roof yesterday morning. To get there requires climbing onto the wood shed roof, then jumping from it to the kiln shed.

The injury to his leg is a little mysterious. There are 3 small puncture wounds, and some bruising, but almost no sign of infection and he is not feverish. The poor fellow does find it extremely painful though.

Laura also had a painful start to last week, as a broken filling in a tooth required a trip to the dentist for the old filling to be removed, and a new one put in. On the way home in the car there was mumbled talk of cracks, nerves, and cusps!

Such things are important to sort out, and ... what else can one do, but it is amazing just how easily working time disappears when things like this happen. An extra trip to town, and visits to the vet, do carve out chunks of time, and progress on tile commissions and the making of benches and shelves for the shed, has been slow, frequently interrupted, and somewhat frustrating. I worked through the weekend, but managed less than half a day today, mostly cleaning up the studio, as I was just so tired.

Tomorrow, Tuesday, is my day at the Potter's Co-operative in Lower Stuart Street, Dunedin (opposite the Law Courts) so work here will have to resume again Wednesday. If you read this blog and are in Dunedin tomorrow, do drop in to the Potter's Co-op between 10 am and 5pm and say "Hi", it would be fun to catch up with you.

Bugs and Browsers...
The problem that some of you are having reading this blog is still not solved, but I am suspecting that there is a little piece of HTML code that is causing some browsers to display all my links at the foot of the post, rather than down the right-hand side. I have started to research the problem, and I do say a big thank you to those of you who are letting me know if the blog displays correctly in your browser or not. I think that the problem may affect recent versions of Internet Explorer, but that Firefox and probably Safari browsers are OK. If this post fails to display correctly in your browser, it would be appreciated if you let me know (and also mention the browser type and version number), and I will do my best to get the thing sorted out.

Demolition Site

2011-05-26T07:15:00.030+12:00

Our house has looked like a demolition site for several weeks. Unkind passers by might say, "So, what's new!" This time is different though. Our usual accumulation of piles of this and that, and our general disorder, has been tramped through with muddy boots, and garnished by a drizzle of wood shavings and saw dust. Bird song and traffic noise has been masked by the howl of electric saws and chain saws. The passage of time has been measured by the percussive, "thwack" of hammers and the basso thump of wooden piles being bashed into place. There is a saying that "Your home is your castle", our home has been a castle under siege. Even our little patch of forest has not escaped the menacing growl and yelp of the saw. Some of our largest trees have had to come down, an estimated 5 or 6 tonnes of timber, mostly poplar, alder and willow, is lying in rounds on the ground, and splitting and stacking has already begun, a herculean task that has been tackled by a young and muscular Hercules that we have had the good sense to summon to our aid.

It is nearly winter here, and maybe there is some primitive unease and doom-laden nervousness accompanying the change of season that is leading us to nest building, and the laying in of nuts and other good things to see us through the time of short days and bone-brittle frosts?

These several simultaneous projects have actually required us to summon a Pantheon of helpers. Our mythic heroes have been skilled in the arts of directing water up hill, through narrow pipes, and across perilous junctions (Jason, the plumber), scaling vast heights in wind and rain and dismembering 50 foot high tree dragons and questing beasts (Dominik, the tree feller), butchering fallen dragons into tasty morsels for the kiln (Shea, the wood splitter), and the construction of a covered area at the back of the house, and a capacious storage unit within a former bedroom (Mark, builder and carpenter).

Dominik about to slay another dragon.

Some of the slain tree dragons.

Oh what good fellows these mighty men have been! By their labours, great things have been achieved, and life has improved somewhat!

Somewhere dry to work and to play! Yay! Something that we have dreamed of doing for years and years, now we have it Thanks to Mark's wonderful skills.

Mark at work. I love his white flat deck truck, it makes a formidable work bench for him, and it also has a lovely "house" that can be put on it to turn it into a house truck.

The interior of Mark and Rhonda's house truck. Isn't it beautiful!

I would like to report with a hearty cheer that all this building boom reveals coffers that are full of golden treasure that has been acquired through business success or acts of valour, but this is not the case, really we have reached a level of frustration and desperation where something just had to be done, and we had to pay people to achieve this.

I have to say that seeing problems solved, repairs completed, and improvements made to work areas has been a huge relief and a boost to the spirits. To walk outside the back door into a dry covered area is just wonderful, and to lay down on a stormy night and not to have to worry about water potentially swooshing down internal walls is a blessing indeed!

So, there is still a lot more to do and to finish. I am making benches and shelves for the shed, which will become my main glazing area. We are varnishing a large storage cupboard and wardrobe which will assist in freeing up space for Laura to have a studio all of her own. Two tile commissions await considerably more activity from myself. And I really should make lots and lots of mugs, small bowls, and platters!

Just had a brief overnight visit from friends, Bevin and Lorraine. They visited at quite short notice, having had a frustrating day trying to fire a new kiln that would not come up to temperature with pots for an exhibition. Due to our general state of chaos, we ended up accommodating them in our gallery area, so they slept amidst pots and paintings. Bevin brought with him an extruder, and we had fun this morning extruding some clay shapes through it. Most entertaining, and it could prove to be very useful. Really nice to catch up with them both again, and I hope Bevin is able to get his wood fired Manabigama inspired kiln sorted soon.

Bevin and Lorraine arrived with an extruder!

Bevin's unfired pots packed into his new kiln, sadly problems prevented it reaching temperature. (Photo from Lorraine and Bevin... hope they don't mind me using it here!)

A Technical Hitch.....

Regular viewers may notice that I have changed the background template for this blog, so we are now various shades of white. The delightful Pat Arkansas kindly let me know that she had experienced some difficulties viewing one of my recent blog posts, and I also had difficulty yesterday when I viewed my blog from someone else's computer. For some reason the formatting got scrambled. My last post came out like a long scroll with all the links and other things that should be on the right hand side displayed below. I thought I would apply a new template and see if that ironed out whatever technical issue was creeping in. I suspect that there might be issues with some versions of Internet Explorer, but I could be mistaken.

If you find that this does not display with links on the right, but they are below the post instead, could you kindly let me know so I can try to remedy the bug. It would help if you let me know the name and the version of the browser that you are using.

Tiles, Glaze Testing, Glaze Problems, Chun & Zinc

2011-05-07T15:35:00.023+12:00

Testing the shrinkage of clay using a carefully measured series of tiles.

At the same time as shed building, fixing leaky gutters, having trees felled, and commencing some extra building.... I have made a start on testing glazes and clays for a tile commission. What I will be making will be glazed tiles for a hearth, approximately 4 feet square.

I tested 3 clay bodies. One is my usual stoneware clay, another is 4 parts of the stoneware clay to one of earthenware (this gives a warmer, almost toasty colour and helps the clay vitrify at a lower temperature), and the other is a white porcelain-like clay that I use for my crystalline glazed pots.

Testing Times....
The first test to do was to roll out a small slab of each clay and accurately mark each out like a ruler, using either centimetres or inches. After firing the clay it can be measured against a real ruler, and shrinkage of the clay determined. Clay can shrink a lot when it is drying and more again when it is fired. Some clay may shrink 15 percent or so from when the tile or pot is made, to how it is when it is finally unpacked from the kiln. When making tiles, it is important for me to know what the shrinkage is, so that I can work out the best size of tile for the job, and how many I need to make. I also made several tiles of different sizes that I accurately measured just after making them, and recorded the measurement on the back for reference.

The other thing to test was slips and glazes.

4 test tiles with the same glaze over different clays and slips with 1% and 2% cobalt.
The recipe for this cone 9 - 10 glaze is
Potash Feldspar 49.4, Whiting 14.6, China Clay 12, Silica 23.6, Magnesium Carbonate 0.3

Slip-sliding away....!
Slips are usually made clay that has had water added to it to make it runny like thick paint or cream. Sometimes colouring is added, and sometimes a little feldspar, glaze frit or other flux to help the slip attach itself strongly to the pot. Slips can be used under a glaze to modify the colour, or to add texture. A good time to add slip to a pot or to a tile is when the clay is still soft and slightly bendable. Soft leather hard. You can add a layer of slip by painting or pouring it.

The basic slip I used was 90% ball clay to 10% frit 4124. I find that this fit my clays well, and the slip has a very slight satin sheen if fired to cone 9 (1260C or 2300 F). I mix this to a creamy consistency with water. Alone, this slip will make a buff stoneware almost white. I added yellow ochre to the slip, by mixing yellow ochre and water to a similar consistency as the slip and doing a 50/50 blend of it. I also made a pale cobalt slip, a schist slip, and a black slip.

About the Glazes...
The glazes that I tested were mostly ones I use a lot. I won't give you details of all of them here, as an already technical blog post, will get even more boring for you, but for those of you who are still awake ... here are two of them;

One was a chün glaze (by Emanuel Cooper) that I almost always find reliable, and I have published this one in the comments after an earlier post (March 10, 2009), but I will do so again here:

"Reliable" chün in the good old days when it worked....over a saturated iron glaze.

Potash Feldspar 46
Dolomite 6
Zinc Oxide 6
Whiting 10
China Clay 2
Silica 30
To this I usually add 2-3 percent bentonite to help it stay suspended in the glaze bucket, and to make it easy to apply to the pot.

Another glaze that I find very useful is this one that started as a recipe by Janet De Boos.

Potash Feldspar 40
Silica 25
Whiting 15
Ball Clay 10
Zinc Oxide 5

I did not much like this glaze when I first made it. The glaze was supposed to be white, and for me it never was...., but I found later that it really makes a good base that will cope with a huge range of firing temperatures, and it becomes much nicer if red iron oxide, copper carbonate, or rutile is added, either individually, or together.

De Boos glaze with 3% copper carbonate and 2% red iron oxide over different slips and clays. Top left is my stoneware/earthenware mix with schist slip. Top right is the white stoneware clay. Bottom Left is stoneware/earthenware mix with yellow ochre slip. Bottom right is stoneware/earthenware mix with a pale cobalt slip. The "Z" pattern over each tile is a brushload of the "reliable" chün ..... Hummm, should have been a splash of blue!

In these tests I wanted to also try it with a little cobalt carbonate, as my client really wanted blue tiles.

De Boos glaze with 3% rutile, 3% copper carbonate, and 1% cobalt carbonate.

To Work....
Well, I applied various slips to most of the test tiles when they were freshly made. I managed to dry them rapidly with the assistance of the pot belly stove. I bisque fired them, then applied the glazes, and fired them again. I fired them accurately to cone 9 (no point at all in testing to an inaccurate top temperature when testing glazes). I had only a short time to do all this, as I wanted to have some test tiles ready for my client who was due to visit Dunedin early in the week. In fact, time was so tight that she was able to attend the unloading of the kiln and handle the tiles when they were still slightly warm!

A Good Firing... And Something Odd!
Most tests worked well, and gave me very useful information. Two or three of the tiles were just the sort of colour that my client wanted, so I will be able to go ahead with the commission now.

The De Boos glaze with rutile does give a chün type effect.

The really odd thing about this test firing was the reliable chun glaze..... For the first time ever... it did not produce any colour at all. In stead of the usual delightful optical blues, there was just a clear and boring glaze.

Umm..... my "reliable" chün. All these should be blue and beautiful! All we have is a boring clear glaze over various slips.

The Big Bag of Zinc!
When I was working on crystalline glazed pots form my most recent exhibition, I bought a 25 kg bag of zinc oxide. Prior to that, I had purchased my zinc in 1 and 2 kg quantities. I used some of the new zinc when making up glazes for some of the crystalline pots... and had difficulties. My fairly reliable crystalline glaze suddenly produced only few crystals, and some pots had to have a further firing, and a coat of zinc and silica added to help promote crystal growth.

Using this same zinc oxide, my reliable chün ... no longer is reliable!

What Happened???
I think that the probably cause may be how finely ground the zinc is. I suspect, but don't know, that my 25 kg zinc is much finer ground than the other zinc that I have used has been. This would mean that it would go into suspension in the glaze much more easily, and also act more powerfully as a flux. I could probably get more crystals to form in a crystalline glaze that was made with this zinc by, either adding more zinc, or slightly lowering the top temperature that I fire to.

How to Solve it?
With the chün glaze, I am not so sure... I may get it to work by firing to a slightly lower temperature, or it may still refuse. Chün glazes get their colour (usually a beautiful blue) by scattering light within the glaze. Probably this is done by having some minute undissolved particles of silica, or other material within the glaze. In this glaze I do not know if the zinc is simply working as a flux that helps control the maturing temperature of the glaze, or if the glaze relies on tiny undissolved particles of zinc in the glaze to scatter the light. If zinc is what scatters the light, then... maybe the finer ground zinc simply will not work!

More tests are needed to determine this.

Hope this is Helpful!
Anyway, I have written all the above in the hope that it might assist someone. Several people have asked me about the chün glazes that I have shown on my blog, and I have tried to be helpful with recipes and other advice. I know that some have struggled to make the chün glaze work, so..., maybe I am now experiencing something similar.

The good thing, from the point of view of this commission, was that I did test several different glaze bases so there was something there for my client. It would have been disastrous if I had only produced variations on my "reliable" chün!

The Shed has Nine Legs.... I've Counted Them!

2011-04-28T19:24:00.018+12:00

Mice have four legs. Rats have four legs. Cats have four legs. Sheds have nine legs... I've counted them!

I don't know how it will run, or even walk! Honestly it is bad enough with four legs, trying to get them to move in the right order. I feel sorry for the shed really, it just stands in one spot all day under the trees, and the rain keeps falling down. I do hope that it doesn't start to sneeze, or catch pneumonia, or something worse!

They say that the shed is finished now, outside anyway.

At the end of some days, when it was dark... and he still was hammering nails, I did have my doubts that it would ever be finished. There were moments too, when things seemed to go really wrong.

I know that one is not supposed to laugh... but, the funniest was when I saw him try to get on the roof to put the nails in, and the new, very thin roofing iron would not take his weight... not even half his weight..., and the metal started to crumple like an aluminium can! Now that was funny.., well, I thought so, but I am used to roofs and climbing trees, and I don't weigh as much as he does.

And there was a time when some of the timber just would not fit....

He changed things a lot, particularly the roof structure, but now it is done, and they seem proud of it.

I saw them sitting in it this evening, sharing a small glass of port, whilst outside the rain was pouring down. They are very pleased that there are no leaks.

They assure me that the shed will be insulated and lined, and that he will make some windows in a little while when the timber has dried out some more.

If it stops raining tomorrow, there is talk of them building something else..., what it is, we will just have to see, but there was a fresh pile of timber in the drive today!

I know that he is also busy making tiles... I think that he will write something about them soon. He did unload some test tiles from the kiln yesterday morning, and had some interesting results.

Anyway, I had better sign off now, and go hunting for some rats and mice!
Best Wishes from Ginger.

(Photos by Laura and Peter... text by Ginger the Cat!)

Friends, Seals, and The Shed

2011-04-23T20:48:00.014+12:00

We had visitors last week, our friends Robert and Shona who live in the UK. Shona's parents live in the South Island, and she tries to come over and visit them most years now. All going well, we see Robert every second year. Robert was my best man when Laura and I got married... back in 1981, and it is a special thing to have friends that have known us so long. Our friends took over the kitchen for a night when they were here, and cooked a lovely meal. Simple ingredients cooked with love and skill can make a banquet in the most primitive of surroundings! In England Robert teaches people how to make violins, and Shona works in the Xray department of her local hospital.

We took a trip together to our lovely beach, and found an unexpected small person there, namely, a young fur seal that seemed in a rather groggy and hungry state. We were concerned because people were exercising horses and dogs on the beach, and I also worry about recreational fishermen as sadly, some have been known to illegally and callously slaughter seals, because seals catch fish....

Someone told us that a large dead seal had been buried on the beach just the day before, and we hoped that it was not the young pup's mother. I did let the Department of Conservation know, but..... I suspect that the likelihood of them sending someone 45 km to rescue a baby seal was rather slim. We did keep a watchful eye on it for some time, and it finally wobbled back into the sea and paddled around. I was happier to leave it in the water, than in a heap on the beach vulnerable to dogs, people, and black backed gulls, and I hope that the wee thing survives.

The Shed....
I had a somewhat frustrating week before our friends arrived, where I had interruptions and things to do on the few days that it did not rain, and when the rain came, it turned the clay to unmanageable sticky mess that resembled the sort of school dinners that one learned to fear when cook was having one of her really bad days! I did try scooping off the slimy top layer and digging holes for foundations, but the holes filled with water, and my boots got stuck.

Little Nigella Stopit, took a keen interest in my eccentric activities. She is used to primly digging little holes herself in a secretive and modest manner. She may have attributed my deeper efforts to my enormous size, and was no doubt very relieved when I put wooden posts in the holes and filled them in again!

Finally, the sun came out a bit, and I had a few hours free. I managed to put in the three remaining posts and do the bearers and joists for the floor on one day, then I got the deck down and nailed the following morning, putting in the last 10 nails after lunch.

We rather enjoyed sitting out on the deck, and I was very tempted to abandon the shed at that stage. What could be nicer than a beer or two of an evening, whilst sitting out with a view of the trees! Several alternative schemes were proposed, including building a shed on two opposite sides of the deck..., but today I elected to continue building as in... plan "A".

I managed to frame up all four sides of the shed today. Things took longer than they might have as I made significant changes to the plan, and added extra timbers. I am sure that the kitset shed does work if built according to the plans, but it looked rather flimsy to me. So I have "beefed things up" adding bottom plates to the three walls that didn't have them, adding extra timbers elsewhere and have also added provision for a window in one wall, and have increased the height of the doorway so that I do not slam my head into the door frame every time I go in and out of the shed. It is still a very light structure, but much of its strength will come with the wall claddings, which I hope to add tomorrow, weather permitting!

Ginger was supposed to write this episode of the blog, but he is having an argument with Nigella at the moment and is growling at her from an elevated position on top of the electric heater. He has had an exhausting day hunting rats I think!

The Shed... Arrives!

2011-04-14T19:18:00.007+12:00

The shed took a little longer to reach here then it might have, as it was sent right through to Dunedin to a depot, then it had to wait for our local carrier to bring it out with a truck that has a crane on it, and they don't run that one out from town every day of the week. The delay was not a problem, as clearing trees and organizing a fairly level site took time to do, and so we were only just ready for the shed when it did arrive.

I spent a few hours carrying the timber for the shed, from the place where it was delivered to the site where I am building it. I think that the total weight is well in excess of 900 kilogrammes, so I carried nearly a ton of shed that day!

The shed is a kitset one, and I bought it from Sheds NZ who are located just outside Christchurch. Times are very difficult for a lot of Christchurch people after the earthquake and it is good to be able to order something from a Christchurch business. All the timber for the shed is colour coded and pre cut, so I will just have to join things together and hammer in nails. The building instructions were packed somewhere near the middle of the bundle of parts, so it was some time before I knew what the green, orange, blue, and purple dots at the end of the sticks of timber stood for, but the instructions look easy to follow and are encouraging!

I have been digging holes and putting in posts for the foundations. Really a shed like I am building would be happy enough built on skids, but I would like some air under the shed to keep it dry, and the land has a slope. It has been hard physical work, as we are on really heavy clay soil, but it has been satisfying to find that I can get these things done. I have two more holes to dig, and four more posts to put in, then the actual building should start to take place more rapidly.

Autumn is here now, there is a hint of frost some nights, and poplars are starting to turn golden. As the season of growth and warmth closes, there is fruit to pick from the apple tree and from the quince tree also. Our pears are very small this year as a result of too much overcrowding and shading from other trees, but I hope to make life better for them over the next few weeks by taking out more trees, and letting in some light.

Ginger says "Hello" to all his fans...., I think he should write the next post, his literary efforts are more entertaining than mine!

A Message from Ginger

2011-04-06T06:59:00.013+12:00

Others of my kind reside with bank managers, teachers of algebra, collectors of taxes, butchers, bakers, and dentists, but I live with artists (or should I say... "artistes"). Now, the thing about artists, is that they look and smell, for the most part, quite like other members of the human species. Sometimes they try to differentiate themselves with eccentric garments, or strange arrangements of their head fur, but it is their day to day living that sets them apart.

Some of you, I hope, may be aware, that the feline family generally favours routine, and order. We prefer our humans to feed us at certain times, and not to fiddle around with our food too much. We select our sleeping places with care to make the best use of the sun. Humans may talk endlessly about being "Green" and conserving energy, but we have always made use of solar power and good insulation.

A problem with human artists is that they often frequent cold buildings with leaky roofs and bad drains, they have little sense of time and order, and suffer from unpredictable moods. Sometimes they work all hours of the day and night, maybe for weeks at a time, other times they stop, and walk around listlessly and complain about "the white fog", "carrying the black dog", or "block".

We felines do our best to teach them better habits, and lead them to a healthier way of living. Sleep, eat, sleep, eat, exercise, groom, sleep, meditate with purring, and so on.... If only they would take notice!!!.....but they still over exert themselves, and end up paying the price!

I am writing this, because I notice that he hasn't got round to updating his blog for such a long time and he feels so bad about that now that he doesn't know how to start it again! He is mostly OK, but really did wear himself out with work for the last exhibition that he had. He muttered a bit about "white fog" and spent hours in front of computers installing and installing Linux operating systems, and forgetting to exercise!

This "fog" lifted recently,

and it was with some alarm that I noticed a huge, two person bush saw being taken from a dusty corner of the studio, and I spied a red faced unfit man sawing down trees outside, sometimes with help from Laura, other times he sawed and chopped on his own.

There is talk amongst the artists of a "shed"..., what ever that is, and there is an area of fairly level ground being made ready for it. So far there is no sign of the "shed", but he keeps listening for it and walking to the back gate. I wonder what colour fur the shed will have and if it will bark or if it will purr? It seems odd to me that it would want to stand outside on muddy ground, when there is a sunny windowsill inside, but... sheds are probably strange creatures like artists. There is no accounting for their taste!

That's all from me for now,

Ginger

Manu

2011-03-17T10:26:00.025+13:00

When I visited the exhibition at Manu Berry's studio at 140 George Street, Dunedin, I found Manu drawing on a large sheet of paper with some sort of charcoal. The faces of an elderly couple emerged from the whiteness of the paper, then their shoulders and the rest of them down to their feet. The process happened rapidly, and Manu seemed to move with the lightness and ease of a dancer in front of his drawing. The couple are a study for some work that Manu is doing that will be part of an exhibition that will mark the 150th anniversary of Otago's Gold Rush. The exhibition will be held at Bellamy's Gallery, Macandrew Bay, Dunedin.

Other celebrations in Dunedin are planned for this coming Friday and the weekend. An article written by Nigel Benson in the Otago Daily Times of 16th March, "Octagon to be turned into a shantytown for celebration", outlines some of the events that are planned.

The exhibition that I had with Manu finished yesterday, and I will be picking up work from it this afternoon all going well. The last time I posted on my blog I promised some images of Manu's work at the exhibition, so here is a little taste of it. Photos of individual works at the exhibition really do not do them justice, as you really had to walk amongst the suspended prints to get a sense the suggestion of air, cloud, and space that they projected.

Do I have favourites? Yes, and you probably do too! I enjoyed the huge scale of the large prints, and the environment that they were part creating in the gallery. It is good to see Manu pushing the boundaries of technique, printing on both sides of the canvas, hanging work from wires across the studio. It makes him progress further, and makes progress possible for others too. For me, my favourite print in the whole exhibition was probably the small wood cut that Manu made of the view out of a window with a teapot and a vase of flowers on the windowsill. I am the sort of person who likes to look out of windows, over chimneys, roof tops, and back yards of shops, and discover beauty there.

We are in a state of shock here. The news from Japan is so awful and relentless. One after another, we have had the cyclone in Australia, the earthquake in Canterbury, and now the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear catastrophe in Japan.

Commentators writing safely from distant parts of the globe will make of it what they will, but for the people caught up in the dust and dirt, the smells, danger and fright of the situation, then other values are more important. I think that a common thread ran through accounts of the Canterbury earthquake, was the importance of family. For many, that is where their first, and possibly their last, thoughts lay. I was moved to read Euan Craig's first hand account of the Japanese earthquake in his blog "Euan The Potter. Born in Australia, Made in Japan". I have also put a link to his site with the other links on the right of my blog.

I will finish with some photos of the coast a few miles North of where we live. I took them on a happier day on the Sunday morning after the opening of my exhibition with Manu. Laura and I took a couple of hours off to get some fresh air. The hill with the point in the background of the first photo is called Puketapu (sacred hill) and the town of Palmerston is at its feet.

Manu Berry and Peter Gregory Exhibition Opening

2011-03-05T19:03:00.020+13:00

Crystalline glazed bottle (7.25 x 6.75 inches 184mm x 171mm) with cobalt, copper and manganese over a nickel bearing stoneware underglaze.

Close up of the bottle.

Vase (7.5 x 7 inches 190mm x 177mm). Twice fired crystalline glaze with iron and cobalt.

This pot came out of the kiln in the morning of opening day. The detail of the glaze made me think of bird's eggs. The pot had two glaze firings, which has made the crystals smaller and very complex.

Detail of "the bird's egg" pot.

Vase (7 3/8 inches x 9 inches 187mm x 229mm). Crystalline glaze with titanium, first glaze fired in electric kiln, then reduction fired in a wood fired kiln.

This is the same vase that was featured at the beginning of my previous blog post. It had a white glaze before, and I decided to risk giving it an extra firing in a wood fired kiln in a reduction atmosphere. I was very pleased with the result.

Detail of the vase.

Manu Berry (centre partly obscured) and I at the opening of our joint exhibition (photo kindly supplied by Rhonda).

Exhibition opening...., quite a press of people there (Photo kindly supplied by Rhonda).

It had been a big rush all of opening day, with pots to unload from the kiln, glaze to grind from bottoms of pots, pots to photograph, catalogue to produce, pots to pack, and so the list went on. Laura worked up at the local shop until 4pm that day, and we were both quite tired by the time that we got into the car to drive to Dunedin. Our good friend Rhonda Beck, who is a wonderfully talented person, hitched a lift with us to the exhibition (Rhonda makes colourful and beautiful clothing, and does stained glass and mosaics).

When we arrived in Dunedin, it was Dunedin's version of the 5 oclock rush hour, which is not as bad as in some cities, but parking was impossible anywhere really close to the exhibition, and we had pots in the car and food for the opening too. After driving in futile circles around the centre of town, I had to stop and deposit Laura and Rhonda and all the things for the opening on the footpath. Then I drove away to a parking building to park the car. Rhonda very kindly stood guard over the exhibition things, and Laura began to carry them to the exhibition. Parking at the parking building was easy, fortunately, and I rushed back and was able to join in ferrying boxes to Manu's studio. We finally arrived at 5.30pm at the start of the opening. Two fellow potters from the potter's Co-op, witnessing my desperately late arrival, kindly helped by putting numbers by the 20 pots that I had on display so that they matched the ones in the catalogue.

The opening was well attended, and we were kept busy until about 8.30 in the evening. I don't think there were many sales really, but people enjoyed themselves and seeing Manu's new studio. I think that there is likely to be a short review of the exhibition in Thursday's Otago Daily Times.

Manu has made some lovely new prints that feature Central Otago wild flowers, bees and honey, and some of the prints hang from the walls, and from wires that traverse the studio. It was a pleasure to be able to share this exhibition with Manu, and I hope it all goes well for him. I will try to take some photos of the exhibition tomorrow when I am in town. For now I have put together a little slide show of pots that I have in the exhibition. I was particularly pleased with the reduction fired vase that is in this exhibition. It had its wood firing at the same time that I was doing a crystalline glaze firing in the electric kiln on the Wednesday before the exhibition. Laura was a great help in that she was able to fire the little wood fired kiln for me up to the temperature that I was planning to start reduction, so I only needed to fire for the last two hours or so. It is a nice kiln to fire, and Laura enjoyed herself.

A slide show of the pots that I have in the exhibition. Background music is Donovan singing "Catch the Wind". (The little button on the right of the bar under the video will make the video larger on your screen.)

If you in the Dunedin area over the next few days, the exhibition runs until March 16th, and you will find it upstairs at 140 George Street, Dunedin. Open Tuesdays to Fridays 10am - 5pm.

Continuing

2011-02-27T13:07:00.021+13:00

White vase approximately 9.5 inches diameter x 7 inches high (240mm x 180mm)

When I was writing my blog last Tuesday, an earthquake hit Christchurch, which is a city about 4 hours drive North of where we live. Since that time, the full horror of the event has become known, and it poured through the media like a river in flood, and it has been passed from person to person like a cloak of sadness. We have been thinking about those who were killed in the earthquake, those who are still missing, those who were injured, and people who have had homes and businesses ruined. New Zealand is a small country, and probably everyone knows people who have lost family and friends in the quake. This week the main road that is outside our front door, has thrummed with the sound of vehicles heading South, away from the quake, and many people sleep lightly in their beds, alert for aftershocks, or thinking of loved ones.

An event like this changes how we feel. Someone on the radio remarked that it made her feel like "being nicer to other passengers on the bus!" I must admit to weighing my own ups and downs against the measure of the quake, and to finding my frustrations with crystalline glazes lightweight... by comparison anyway!

White and gold pot 7 inches high (180mm)

I am firing the kiln again today, this is the fifth glaze firing that I have done since February 17th, and in that time the kiln has never been cold. Most firings I am only managing to fit 4 pots in the kiln. Usually 3 in the bottom, and an extra one propped up above them on a half shelf. On the worst firing 3 out of 4 pots had problems of one kind or another, and the best firing 3 out of 4 pots worked out, so you could say that I am having a 50 percent success rate with these. The things that can go wrong are fairly varied. My failures in this series have included such things as... not enough crystals in the glaze, or annoying bubbles a glaze that was otherwise OK. The "not enough crystals" occurred on two occasions, one was due to going about 5 degrees C too high at the peak of the firing, and the other may be related to a new batch of zinc that I started to use. For some reason it seems a little less potent than the one before?? The bubbles are a mystery. There are no unusual ingredients in the glaze, but bubbles do occur occasionally. They are irritating when they happen as they are as noticeable as a wart on a super-model's nose! The treatment for the bubble is to re-fire.
The treatment for the super-model is probably even more expensive! I was firing the kiln last Tuesday when the earthquake struck. The white vase in the first two photos was in that firing on a rather wobbly half shelf. I did wonder if it would have fallen on the pots below it, but it came through everything OK.

Cloudy pot 10.25 inches high (260mm)

Above is a pot that I quite like. The crystals are rather like clouds that are full and leaky. I am tempted to re-fire the pot to reduce the crystal size and make it more complex, but I think that I will do this to another pot. The other thing that would improve this glaze would be to fire it slightly higher at peak temperature so that less crystals form. This would give a better balance between crystal and the surrounding background colour.

Blue and orange pot 9 inches high (230mm)

This pot, where I have layered two glazes over each other, has a lovely complex background surrounding the crystals. Some areas are milky, and others more translucent.

Green pot, 9 inches high (230mm)

I have been wanting to experiment further with the runny nature of crystalline glazes. To use this as an asset, rather than as a bother. Above is a little experiment that I did with glazing the lower half of a pot with a simple iron bearing stoneware glaze, and then putting a green crystalline glaze over the top half. I will be playing further with this combination.

Now it is just after 3.30pm and I have turned off the kiln. I started the firing last night about 10 in the evening.

To finish with... A book to read and a film to watch!

I read a book recently, and would like to recommend it. The book is "Light on Snow" by Anita Shreve. I had started to listen to a book tape reading of the book, but the third tape was defective (I could hear the other side of the tape backwards coming through almost louder than the side that I was trying to listen to!). Fortunately our library had a copy of the actual book on their shelves, and I was able to finish the story. I have not read anything by this author before, but I see she has written quite a number of other books. I really enjoyed this one and needed to finish it! Essentially the book is about a father and his 12 year old daughter who find an abandoned baby. The story is moving and gentle, and is very much about families, about love and loss, and about putting life together again.

We watched a film last night, Malcolm, a Nadia Tass and David Parker film starring Colin Friels. I see this Australian film has been around for quite a few years.... 1986 (it takes us a while to catch up on such things out here in the country!!), so we might be the last people in the world to have watched it, but... it gave us a good laugh and a lift to the spirits too!