Red and green from the same glaze, and the towers of St Augustine on a sleepy Sunday afternoon!

Unfortunately a single photograph can never convey the experience of picking up a pot and turning it around, so I thought I would show two views of a bottle that came out of the kiln this week. I particularly like this bottle, to me it looks like the crystals have clumped together into continents that are surrounded by oceans of grey sea.

Here is vase that came out of the same firing as the bottle. This one also has red crystals, but the colour of the glaze that surrounds the crystals is pink. The bottle and the vase both had an extra firing in a kiln that I dripped cooking oil into to create carbon monoxide. The carbon monoxide helps strip away the oxygen atoms from the copper carbonate that is in the glaze. This turns it from a pretty green, to red, and finally to copper metal. (CuCO3 becomes Cu with no O!) Without this extra firing the pots would have been a similar colour to the bowl that is in the next photo.

I usually don't have much success with crystalline bowls, as the highly fluid nature of the glaze can make things very difficult, but they are lovely when they turn out. Here, the glaze that has collected in the middle of the bowl is smooth, dark, and mysterious. Sometimes crystalline glazes can be rough to the touch and unpleasant where they pool, I was lucky with this one.

Last Sunday I drove to Waimate to collect my pots from an exhibition that had just closed. It can be a bit miserable collecting unsold work after an exhibition, but the expedition to Waimate was an enjoyable one, and more so because I was able to collect my father on the journey up, and spend the time in Waimate with him.

 (Bye-the-way, Waimate is pronounced "Why-mat-ay".)

It was a beautiful sunny day, and Waimate proved to be a fascinating place to walk around.Waimate is quite a big small town really, with a great expanse of flat farmland on the seaward side and a solid range of hills at its back. Most vehicles travelling North and South miss Waimate these days, as the main road has bypassed the town. On this sunny Sunday afternoon it felt so quiet that it seemed like Waimate had inhaled and held its breath, but the town must have been a busy place in its day; there is a sense of grandeur to the wide streets and public spaces that says "We have prospered."

Many of the shop fronts still have verandas over the footpath.


The makers of this 1910 building used concrete to imitate stone construction around its arched windows and doors.

 

This hotel still has its lovely tall chimneys. Chimneys, and their lack, is something I always notice these days. After the Canterbury earthquakes, most chimneys around the Christchurch area either fell down, or were pulled down. To me a building minus its chimneys, is a bit like a person without ears!

I caught glimpses of a church tower from the main street of the town, and went to investigate. The shape of it was like something that I might expect to see in Europe somewhere.

The tower belonged to St Augustine's Church, and St Augustine must have been fond of towers, as the building has an extra one that stands free of the main building, like a lighthouse... or a wooden rocket!

It was a struggle to find a good spot to take an uninterrupted distant view of the whole church building, I could nearly see it from a supermarket car park, but trees, cars, and wires got in the way.

A clearer view from the middle of a road, tended to distort things.

The church has a lovely covered entry, known as a lychgate. I enjoy looking at structures like this, with the simple, logical use of triangles, bracing, and ties. There is a wholesome sense of order that reminds me of music by Handle or Bach. Probably the whole thing was jointed and pegged together without the need of nails.


I have said that Sunday afternoon in Waimate was rather quiet, and this was quiet in a good way,

but...

Was that the roar of a classic car engine, and a screech of tyres?... Not quite, but down a side street there was an impressive mural of a classic car race on a wall; and there is my father, watching the cars hurtle past!

Waimate has a long history of street racing, and the next Waimate 50 GT series will be held October 25-27 2014.

Well, that was an all too brief glimpse of Waimate. A wonderful place really. Well worth a visit!

Over the last day or two, apart from catching up with the blog, I have been making porcelain bathroom hand basins. Someone has asked me to make one for them, and I have made two of them... just in case. I used 7.5 kg of clay for each one, and they have a diameter of about 15.5 inches when freshly made, that is nearly 400mm in metric. I will have to wait a couple of days for them to dry enough to turn the underside.