who needs sleep...

well the firing has started. Late is better than not happening so life is good!

As I arrived last night at 10 pm for my shift of starting the fire, I noticed that there were people standing in the kiln! My fears were confirmed as I approached through the dark that in fact they were still loading and had two thirds of the front stack still to go. As always I pitched in as much as possible.

By 11, Chris had to go home and Louise went off to sleep as she was to take a shift at 2- 7. They had managed to get one more shelf in by then.

A very tired Cam and I worked hard an had the rest loaded by 3 am. and the fire in the bottom of the chimney going by 3:30.


This left the door to be bricked up which took about another hour.

The fire box was lit by 4:30, I was off to sleep!

I had a lovely wake up call from my son Alec at 7:30 and headed back out to take my shift til 1pm. This morning was breezy and cold, but the farm is looking wonderfully inviting this time of year.

Here's a pic in the door and lets try a video!

and so it begins

well loading the kiln has started, and should as i'm writting this be finished. Here are a couple of pics of the start of the back stack and also of the new stoke door. We have new main fire box and side stoke doors for this firing. Hopefully they are easier to use than the last ones. These should lift off very easily as the others were heavy and sometimes a bit stuck!




here is a pic of the inside of Chris Lass's new studio. It is a turn of the century post and beam barn! So jealous!

cups, cups, cups

I've started to glaze for the firing this coming week and have realized that I have a mountain of work ready. I guess I am going to have to edit what I really want fired. Before I realized this I went ahead and made twenty more cups! Guess I'll have some left overs. Oh well they can be put through the reduction kiln and add to the inventory for All Sorts Gallery.
I'm also realizing it is a good thing I have at least a small SUV because it it is going to be full to the gills with pots to take to the firing. Two large crates of bottle vases barely put a dent in the work to be packed up.Here is another pic of the new work, I'm working on labeling for the new gallery.

spring warmth

This morning looked quite bleak as I headed out the door to take Alec my 3 year old son to daycare. Clouds were circling and it felt a lot like rain. By the time my work day of 1 hour was over, the sun had come out and a glorious day was in full swing. I decided to come home and make for a last day before the woodfiring next weekend.

It was a great day to dry to things outside, not too hot, not too sunny, and most of all no wind. So as fast a work came off the wheel it went out in the back yard to stiffen up. When it comes to outdoor flat surfaces for pots, anything will do!

This lets me finish the work all in a day. This also allows me to hopefully get it all dry by wednesday to bisque, and then glaze on Friday. We start to load on Saturday so there is no time to loose. I looked through my work that I have ready for the firing and decided that I needed a couple more bottles, 14 didn't seem like enough and some more plates and wall plates.


Today also allowed me to finally really make a mess in the new studio. People have been asking for along time now if I have been making int he studio, well I have, but not enough to make a mess. Today finally feels like I'm in there and making it my own.

Here are some of the fired pots from the firing a couple of weeks ago. It feels like the owrk is starting to have a cohesive feel.

warmth

Today felt like the first day of spring here. My tulips are coming up and have been eaten off again by the passing deer. So much for festive colours in front of the house. The classes at both mohawk and DVSA are between terms and so I had a very short day in a mohawk today. Kiln shelves were washed, platter were checked on and the studio had a quick once over with the mop.

This left me with most of the day to spend in my own studio. For the first time I managed to sit down at my wheel and be bathed in sunlight. My old studio for those of of you who had never been here was in the basement. As was my studio before that and most peoples first studios. They are the unwanted spaces of most homes and are easily converted to a messy area. Finally having a studio above ground is wonderful. The warm sun on my hands as I through made up for the fact that I was wearing a tuque and that the water almost had ice in it. Luckily my clay lives beside my heater and so it too was warm.

Here are a couple of pics of some brie bakers and some new slab dishes with feet on my new rolling racks. The dishes are decorated with roulettes as slabs and after setting up they are slumped over a plaster mold and the feet are added.

The brie bakers all received a generous coating of slip after only a couple of hours of drying. The warmth of the sun was making them happy as well today. Seems like my window placement was a good choice.

mix ups

A couple of weeks ago I re-wrote my glaze book. It was a mess with glaze spills and oxides. Not to mention all the formulas that were written in the margins. In doing so I seem to have miss labeled my slip recipes. This was twigged by a friend and fellow Potter Jordan McDonald who comment that my recipe seemed to be lacking a lot of plasticity (clay). Was he ever right. I had switched the titles of my Robin Hopper Slip with my Casting Slip. What a goof.

Now that the problem is solved I have two new buckets of slip aging. I took the opportunity yesterday, to make some more platters to try it out and make sure the slip is right this time. It was nice a creamy in the bucket and stood up well to some brush work. Hopefully these 30 inchers will last this time. My pile of reclaim only seems to be growing these days and not going down. Luckily one bucket of reclaim equals 4 platters so the pile will go down quickly once it is processed again.
I love when I can get the slip to clinging to the underside of the rim like this. I try as much as possible to have at least one on each platter. It comes from the brush pushing the slip out over the edge when I'm swirling the leaf pattern on. I think it references the wet slip really well. They end up looking dynamic like maybe they might drip off.

identity issue

Well I have the first pieces back from the gas kiln now and am wondering if I need to work on my identity? I think this new work is going in a wonderful direction but am concerned some of it looks an awful lot like fellow potters Tony and Sheila Clennell. They have been very good to me and I respect both them and their work very much. Sometimes I wonder if my admiration comes too close copying? The surface on these plates is very much the surface that Tony and Sheila often achieve on their Shino work.


While I wonder about the shino surface, i do have to admit that the slip decorated work is working very well. I love the way it carbon traps on the ridges of slip. Carbon trapping is formed by the soluble soda ash in the glaze coming to the surface on drying pots after they have been glazed. This surface soda ash traps carbon int he form of soot in the early reduction stages of the firing. It then melts into the glaze leaving areas of carbon suspended int he surface glaze matrix. You can really see this well on the surface of the white shino cup and bowl .

I have more cups in this weeks firing and hope they turn out as well as these did. The latest batch are in a couple of colours, red, celadon, and raven's blue. We'll see if I feel these give me more of the identity that I was looking for.

Last week I kept working on the large platters with slip decoration. I have now busted through 8 large plates ans 14 small wall plates all having slip cracking off them in the drying. Something seems to be a miss in my bucket of slip. Perhaps I need to make yet another batch and see if I have mixed it incorrectly?

Back to the wheel!