murmers of ideas

I've been struggling with how to talk about the new pots from the last wood firing. I think that it isn't so much that I can't speak about them or don't have an opinion but rather that I have a huge amount to say about them and can't seem to pear it down to a manageable mouthful. Here are a few of the pots and I'll try to be brief. The first is a sweet little tea pot which was one of only a few of my pieces that ended up with a blast of cooling crystals on the fireside face. We crash cooled the kiln for about 20 minutes before starting the reduction cooling cycle. This was probably more an over sight than a mistake as we bunged up the kiln. This produced a crusty crystalline structure on the surface of many of the pots on the fire face of the first shelf.
These are the fireside and leaside of this bottle. Notice how there was lots of bounce back of the flame on the back of the bottle to give the fantastic reduction cooled swirls. These pics don't do the depth of colour in the surface justice. There are reds, yellows greens and blues and mingling together to form a massive amount of surface variation and movement.

old forgotten friends

This weekend melinda, alec and i headed up to the Ottawa valley to see my folks. As all good parents do they keep around the things their children have made. Over the years I have made many things but most proudly displayed seem to be my pots. Many of these I haven't seen or maybe noticed in a long long time. Somehow with the latest wood firing out and all of the pondering I'm doing about surface and direction of my work these pieces spoke to me again. Perhaps it is the full circle I've taken back to wood firing, or maybe just noticing them again but they remind me of why I do this. The simple forms informed by quiet nights of firing with good friends, good wine and good conversation. These all date back ten years to my Sheridan days.

I wonder sometimes about how ideas or notions get into our thinking. I've often wondered how I was drawn so strongly to making pots. Looking around my moms place made me realize that I've always been surrounded by them especially old ones. Here is one of my favorite of her collections, check out the fantastic old Quebec stoneware gallon jug!

unloading

I think this firing will be something that I talk about for a long time. These pots for the first time in a long time make me choose my words carefully. They make me wonder what words to use let a alone use them, and when it come to describing the work solely with words I am left slightly speechless.

Instead of going on about what happened during the opening of the kiln, I think i'll show a few photos and that will speak for itself. The first is the crew unbricking the door and then taking out the remaining ash left in the firebox. The following are in order from front to back stack of the kiln as it came out. I'll post more photo of the pots themselves as I am able to talk about them.


The last is of Cam Fishers large jar which was the top of the last stack. It went in raw and with nothing on the surface.....

and so it ends

well it is suddenly finished! after weeks of prep and a whole week of frantic work and driving, it is all finished. Now we need to wait and contemplate what we have done until friday, when we can see if the labour was worth it.
A quick bit about the firing.
-We started the fire on monday morning at 4:30 am
-small fire for a whole day then a slightly larger one until we were into full on stoking by wed.
-Wed morning we were at about cone 6 in the front and not yet cone 04 in the back
-thurdays' evening / over night we were at cone 11 in the front and 9 in the middle, with six almost down in the back

-by friday at 2 we were at cone eleven in the front and middle and not at 9 yet in the back,so we started side stoking

-friday night we cranked the stoke up a bit and dropped 9 and ten in the back as well as 12 in the front

saturday at 7:30 am we filled the fire box to over full and closed up the kiln and bunged up all the peeps and ports as well as any cracks in the door
we down fired in reduction til I left at 1 pm and were planning on continuing til into the evening

and now we wait.....