One or two favourites from the recent wood firing

A shade over 6 inches in height, this pot with its splash of Len Castle Shino glaze, seems full of life and makes me feel happy to hold it!

 Seen from the top or from the side this little porcelain bowl seems quite large in the photo, but it only measures about 3 inches high by 5 wide. The glaze is Malcolm Davis Shino, and there is a splash and dribble of a copper red glaze inside and out. The colour ranges from grey, where the glaze has trapped some carbon, to orange. The bowl is small, but it is something that I enjoy picking up in my hand and turning around.

Here is a companion to the first bowl that we looked at that is just a bit bigger. This has no splash of copper, but there is a nice greenish area where wood ash has melted on the pot whilst it was being fired.

I wasn't too sure if liked the rather pointed and strong copper red splashes on this shino glazed pot when I took it out of the kiln, but it has grown on me, and I keep imagining it with a flower arrangement in it of rather tall stems and blooms.

This is a tea bowl that I threw on the wheel, then altered with my hands to make it gently triangular from the top. The glaze is a celadon glaze that I found a recipe for in a book on Oriental glazes by Nigel Woods. It is an opaque looking pale grey-green, and only has 0.5 percent red iron oxide to give the green colour when fired in a reduction atmosphere. I like the splash of copper red glaze on the inside which enlivens the celadon considerably.

Copper red. This started as a recipe in a Thames and Hudson glaze book by Stephen Murfitt, but was slightly modified by me when I made it. I substituted calcium borate frit, for standard borax frit, and I reduced the 5 percent tin oxide to 1.5 percent, and the 1.5 percent copper carbonate to 0.4 percent, and I added 2 percent bentonite. I thought the calcium borate would slightly lower maturing temperature to the glaze, and the reduction in tin and copper would give me a better, darker red! (Less is sometimes more!). This proved to be the case. The bowl was in the coolest part of the kiln which only got to about cone 7, and has worked marvellously well, better than where it reached cone 9.

Another copper red. Quite a different recipe to the one above it, and fired much hotter too. This came out more of a dark pink rather than a full red.

A surprise this one. It was put in the kiln late when loading and there was still a little space to use up. I had glazed the plate months ago with the thought of putting it in the electric kiln, but had not fired it.

I deliberately filled this pot with glaze and overflowed it to give the glaze runs that animate the pot. Len Castle Shino glaze on a sandy high fired stoneware.

Sculptural pot with crawled Malcolm Davis Shino glaze.

Glaze Recipes

Malcolm Davis Shino (Modified) Cone 7 - 11
Nepheline Syenite  40.9
Soda Feldspar          9.8
China Clay              18.2
Ball Clay                 13.8
Red Earthenware     6.0
Soda Ash                17.3


Len Castle Shino (Modified) Cone 9 - 11
Nepheline Syenite   80
China Clay              15
Ball Clay                   5
Salt                           3
Yellow Ochre            0.5


T&H 145a (Modified)         Cone 7 - 9
Soda Feldspar           45
Silica                         20
Calcium Borate Frit  15
Whiting                      15
China Clay                   5
Bentonite                     2
Tin oxide                      1.5
Copper Carbonate       0.4