Good firing. Just some photos for now!
After firing the kiln on Sunday, I went to Oamaru to help my parents move to a smaller house. I unpacked kiln in the last of the light on Wednesday after returning home. Have spent today sorting pots, grinding off glaze runs, and photographing work. The Kiln fired rather hot at the lower shelf and cone 12 was well down, cone 11 almost a glaze... so not quite sure just how hot we got there! Middle of kiln was cone 11 to 12. Some real treasures, delightful shinos and copper reds. A a couple of sad losses of teapots that got stuck to shelves with glazes that hadn't run before, but over all a very good firing.
Here follows just a quick sample of most of the teapots, and a few of the other things. Sorry no sizes and captions, but have to go to bed! Busy day again tomorrow.
Comments
I do so hope sales are rising ...you deserve it.
One thing about glaze runs another potter who does crystal glazes told me - he takes a very hot propane or jewelers torch and heats the glaze up where it has stuck to the kiln shelf till the glaze at that spot gets hot enough to melt a little and then taps the piece and it releases from the shelf. I tried this with two pieces of glaze stuck together and it did indeed release. One piece was left with a piece of the glaze from the other and I never had a chance to test that one too because it was a pot that wasn't appealing, but I intend to experiment with this process further - I am thinking this may be a way to salvage pots with runs rather than trying to break them free from the kiln shelf. This might even be something to test on an old part of a shelf and a test tile to see how it can be accomplished before trying it on the pots one would want to save.
I'll be back, spectacular work Peter.
The blue pieces are fantastic, I love the blue mug with red. And I like red mud and gray and the red cup, these are my prefered's one. Very beautiful ornaments on the red mud.
Beau travail, désolée pour les pièces collées.
The coast is really wonderful near your home too.
Bye bye see you
It is lovely to receive your comments and to feel part of a supportive community. I really appreciate your efforts in staying in touch. It is not an easy time for us here with the struggle to sell things and the pressure of exhibiting work often without any reward of sales, so your friendship lifts my spirits and the discoveries of each firing helps keep me going and trying to make something that is better and more beautiful each time.
I didn't add notes as to what the glazes were with each photo, as time was limited when I put them together, but you may be interested to know that the teapot with the unusual handle (the last teapot in the sequence of photos) has a dolomite matt glaze that is over slip on which I had sprinkled crushed local basalt. The basalt has got hot enough to melt and to spot through the dolomite glaze with those dark spots and blotches. The first teapot, the one with the handle over the top has splashed and poured glazes over slip that had basalt, local schist rock, and copper carbonate dusted over it.
I would like to reply to each of you by name as I usually would do, but I must now go and throw some bowls and mugs, but I will add this for Armelle.
Thank you so much Armelle for reading my posts and making the effort to comment in spite of having to cope with translating from my English to your French and back to English again! Any "mud" to "vase" mistakes are forgiven, and can in fact be interesting, because they do sometimes indicate the common history of our languages. Votre effort est apprécié, et vos commentaires me rendent heureux!
Thanks for your comment. It is a good thought, making pots with personality, especially these days when you can get a million and one identical sets of mass produced cups, mugs, plates, and so on for a song! A set of dancing teacups would be rather nice to go with the dancing teapot! I will that some thought, I will also have to do something about inviting Laura to dance!
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The trailed shino is on two of the coffee mugs. One has a shell pattern on it and the other has my attempt at seagull!
I put slip on some of the teapots after assembling them, and incised a pattern into the wet slip with one the wooden throwing tools that I had handy at the time.