Saturday, April 7, 2012

Exciting News, Kiln Prep, and Small Stuff


 I recently received a project grant! With support of the North Carolina Arts Council and the partnering arts councils of the Central Piedmont Regional Artists Hub Program I will be building my wood-firing kiln! With the kiln shed coming along well I hope to begin construction on the kiln in May!
Wadding from previous kiln firing with "Heindl" imprinted on them
At Joseph's we have been prepping the big anagama kiln for firing in a few weeks. I was recently cleaning the interior of the kiln and found the pieces of wadding pictured above, left over from the last firing. They were from the bottoms of two of my pots, with my last name imprinted on the wadding!

Small bits of glass stuck into the sides of the mugs. Ash glaze went over these mugs on the outside- should be lovely!

Trying some white slip trailing to go under the ash glaze
It's down to the last week of making pots for the kiln, and this coming week will just be very small things to tuck in around the larger pieces. I have been making mugs for several days last week. Making thin walls on the pots and glazing them raw still makes me a bit nervous, but I am feeling better about it!
Mark your calendars, the kiln opening is May 5-6 and 12-13!

5 comments:

Dennis Allen said...

Congratulations on the grant. It's great to do business with other people's money! Nice mugs.

Liberty Stoneware said...

Thanks, Dennis! I am very grateful for the grant, putting infrastructure on the farm has been really expensive! The mugs (especially the handles) have been somewhat of a struggle since they are modeled from Joseph's handles and Mark Hewitt's mug. I've never made handles that way Joseph does and sometimes it's a struggle to learn a new technique!

Elaine said...

Congratulations! Much deserved grant money that you will put to very good use! All the best, Elaine Mojoe's Trailside Coffeehouse Damascus VA

Joe Troncale said...

That is fantastic that you landed that grant! What a great oppportunity!
Lovely decoration on those pots!
Will love to see the end result of the glass in the pots after the firing!

Liberty Stoneware said...

Thanks Elaine and Joe! It will be fantastic to have a kiln of my own and something to really focus on testing glazes and clays. There are a lot of experiments going into this big kiln of Joseph's, so I am excited to see the results and carry them over to my kiln!