Spring Has Sprung!

Cleopatra Pitcher. Alkaline copper glaze. Height 15 inches.

To turn up to an exhibition opening with a box of pots still warm from the kiln, may seem heroic, but it is actually bad organization! Anyway, on Sunday morning I arrived at Gallery On Blueskin at Waitati with my work for their Spring Show 15 minutes before the 11am opening and, yes.., half of the pots were still slightly warm and the others were only a day older! The gallery did know that the pots were coming at the last moment (I had arranged it a couple of days before) and had reserved a table for them, so all worked out well, but I did feel bad being so late all the same.

A snake head meets its tail in the shade of the handle!

Things had got to that last minute state as a direct result of my poor old brain trying to think of too many things at once. I had known that the exhibition was coming up, but.., another Spring exhibition event in a month's time smeared some of my date remembering neurons, and things were scrambled up there!

Pitcher with cobalt wash decoration. Approximately 14 and a half inches high.

The good thing was that a potter friend of mine got in touch about a week ago and asked me if I could deliver his things to the gallery for the Spring Show. This alerted me as to the actual date, and our place became a scene of frantic activity.

Pitcher with alkaline copper glaze approximately 15 inches high.

I had several commitments through the week that ate into my productive time, but managed to bisque, glaze, and then fire two electric kiln loads of earthenware pots that I had made some time earlier and had been accumulating for a wood firing.

11 inch jug incised slip decoration under glaze with green/blue washes.

Not only is my electric kiln completely hands on, but it also takes a long time to cool, nevertheless, I see from my kiln log, that I managed to fire it on the 18th, 20th, 22nd, 24th, and 26th before the show, and put another bisque on the 27th as soon as I got home from the opening. The firing on the 18th was one I was doing anyway, but firings after that were for the show. The unpacking of the first glaze firing took place at 2.30am and the kiln was commencing the next glaze firing by 3am, that was my equivalent of changing a set of wheels on a formula one car in the middle of a race.

6 inch milk jug

I was almost as busy cooling the kiln for those last two firings as I was firing it, so I have had very little uninterrupted sleep for quite a time. My electric kiln is top loading and I cracked open the lid with progressively longer props from 550 degrees Centigrade. With care, by inserting a slightly longer prop every hour or two, I could get it to come down at about 40 to 50 degrees Centigrade per hour. I had a top cover shelf over all the work about 3 inches below the top of the kiln so none was directly exposed to the cold night air. This is not a practice that I would recommend as it is not kind on the kiln or its furniture, but it did make the difference between completely failing to get work to the gallery, and arriving in the nick of time.

6 inch jug with flowing cobalt and manganese washes.

One good thing about being under pressure to get Something to the exhibition was that I did
glaze the earthenware pots, including some large ones that I was a bit scared of glazing! I was very pleased with the result. Also, I mostly resisted the temptation to play really safe in the glazing. Things were so desperate anyway, that a glazing disaster hardly would have made things worse..., but something daring, could result in an exhibition piece.

6 inch jug with flowing cobalt and manganese washes.

9 inch jug with cobalt decoration.

8 inch jug with flowing cobalt and manganese washes.

11 inch jug with flowing copper washes.

11 inch jug with flowing cobalt and manganese washes.

Ginger cat (who wanted to be helpful) and jug.

As well as getting pots ready for the exhibition, I have also managed to squeeze in some time to repair and, hopefully, improve the wood fired raku kiln that I built some time ago.

I have my group of teenagers coming to do a raku session as soon as it stops raining, so I am getting the kiln ready for that.

About the Glazes.
A few years ago I played with a Janet DeBoos glaze. This was for Cone 05 -03 and had frit 4110/ 90, Ball clay/ 5, Lithium carbonate/ 5, Tin oxide/4, Copper Carbonate/6
I liked the blue green colour of this alkaline copper glaze, but it had a really bad tendency to form a huge lump in the bottom of the glaze container, was impossible to apply with a brush on bisque, and matured just slightly on the low side for the clay I am using and fitted very badly. I decided to use it, but I modified it by reducing the frit to 85 parts, doubling the ball clay to 10 parts, adding 1 part bentonite, replacing the Lithium carbonate with Petalite. I also cut back slightly on the copper carbonate, to 5.5 rather than 6. The extra ball clay and the bentonite made the glaze a pleasure to apply with the brush, aided glaze suspension in the glaze bucket, and also raised the maturing temperature. I suspect that replacing the Lithium carbonate with petalite may have also helped prevent the solid lump in the bucket as Lithium carbonate is not only poisonous but is partially water soluble. (Petalite is a mineral that contains lithium, alumium and silica.). I took a risk in using my modified version of the glaze untested, but I was really pleased with the result. The first pitcher that begins this blog is an example of this modified glaze.

I used two other glazes, one a commercial white "safe" glaze (which I usually find too refrigerator like white in some situations). The other glaze was a lead bisilicate glaze with some earthenware clay, ball clay, and tin oxide. I love this one as it is a warm white that has character. I also found that it was possible to do watercolour like washes with oxides over this white without fear of it blistering or lifting off. So I tried some free runny washes, which were fun to apply and did pick up any incised detail. You will see some examples of the runny watercolour-like washes in some of the photos above.

Drying the glazes at night by the stove. The pale glazed pot on the right is one of the tall green pitchers.

For those who haven't seen unfired glazes before, I thought you might be interested in these photos. As you will see, the pots are shades of gray at this stage. The final colour only develops as the pot is fired in the kiln. The dry, powdery components of the glaze have to melt and make what is in fact a special sort of glass.

The pitcher on the left is the 14 and a half inch one with the cobalt blue washes.

My sister, Christine, has recently started putting a blog together about a trip that she and her husband did to England, Europe, and Africa, if you are in the mood to do some arm chair traveling, you might like to hop over and have a look. Here is a link Turners' Travels