Thursday 14 February 2013

stampers

I made some stampers for the coffee and tea caddies. I'd have like some different lettering, as these weren't easy to remove from the clay after pressing in. I did dab talc over the clay, which helped a little. hopefully i'll have some pots to use these on soon.

Wednesday 13 February 2013

Great article on reduction firing

I've jsut found a really good article about reduction firing a gas kiln, written by Linda Arbuckle. See it here: http://lindaarbuckle.com/handouts/reduction_fire.pdf
I've clearly still got lots to learn, but thanks to articles like this hopefully each firing should see better results. Looking forward to the next kiln load now!

Tuesday 12 February 2013

The firing results



Overall I'm really pleased with this firing. I left the reduction until cone 10 was reached and then soaked at this temp for an hour. The blistering seems to be less prevalent. A couple of the storage jars are cracked, but I think they were already present before firing, due to the clay freezing while wet.

Sunday 10 February 2013

Hot, hot, hot!!!

Almost there! Actually, I took this about an hour ago, and the kiln soon reached cone 10 after this. It's now in reduction.
I lit the kiln at 9:30 am and it's now 8pm. In the past I've put the kiln into reduction before reaching cone 10 and then turned it off almost as soon as it got there. I'm going to let it soak for an hour tonight though and then gradually reduce the gas pressure for a while afterwards. The reason being the glaze in the last firing was riddled with pin holes. Hopefully leaving it for longer will give the glaze time to heal itself. I've read that the pinholes are caused by gases escaping from the clay body. The clay that I'm using at the moment has more of a rough / porous looking surface when bisque fired and is possibly why the problem seemed more evident in the last firing. In previous firings with the finer white stoneware the pinholes haven't been much of a problem.
I'm also going to allow the kiln to cool for longer and won't open it until Tuesday night.
I'll try to post pictures then.

Saturday 9 February 2013

paintings and pots

Hello, sorry it's been such a long time since I posted! i do have an excuse, sorry meant 'reason'! I've made quite a bit of work recently, but quite a bit of it has been damaged by the freezing conditions. The sub zero temperatures arrived before the pottery had dried and unfortunately a lot of it split as the water in the clay froze. I did manage to salvage about half of the work which I'm due to glaze fire tomorrow. I'll bring it into the house in future!
I've also been doing some painting recently. Just quick still life studies in oil. I've been doing these mainly to get some confidence in the media, as I've not really done that many oil paintings before.
Tomorrow I fire the first glaze firing of 2013. Pictures to follow...