First Peek in the Kiln

I may have jinxed myself, but I cracked the kiln slightly this evening since it was getting down below 500 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm hoping to unload tomorrow morning before heading to work and then an evening meeting. Here's to hoping for some good pots to tag along with the other inventory at the Old Salem Pottery Fair on the Square this weekend!

Slightly better view

Patience.

"Patience is a virtue" is the old adage that I did not pay any mind to this morning. My pottery is single fired, meaning that I glaze raw pots without bisque firing first. This brings in the conundrum and graceful dance of putting moisture (in the glaze) back into a drying clay vessel. The walls soak up the wet glaze pretty fast and can become very flexible, very quickly. I make my pots pretty thin and this usually works out just fine. When I put glaze on the inside and the outside of the piece I usually need to wait between glazing the inside and glazing the outside in order to let the walls set back up a bit. I was rushing to get ready to go to the museum for work this morning and thought, "maybe it will be okay if I just go ahead and double dip these mugs now." WRONG!

I arrived home this evening to find the handles collapsed off of the sides of the mugs and sitting in little, sad pools next to the vessel. These are the lessons that keep me humble.

The nice thing about single firing is that when I screw up a pot, it goes back to the pile of scrap clay to be recycled for future use!

Big Kilns and Recent Travels

I delivered pots to Joseph Sand's last week and then zipped off to my other worlds outside of pottery.

After a weekend of dancing and a conference,

and communing with nature in the Valley of Virginia,

I helped with loading Joseph's kiln yesterday, which is always an experience and fascinating to watch the loading, particularly the "big pots."

The firing will be this weekend, and I'm looking toward another firing in my kiln next month. Picked up a load of wood yesterday!

Getting Ready

I dropped my pots off at Joseph Sand's this past Friday. The boxes of pottery filled my car, twice! I wish I had my camera with me when I was packing things up at the North Carolina Arts Incubator. Everything had been tucked away on my bisque ware shelf, and as I brought each piece out, glazed it, and put it aside to pack, it seemed like everything multiplied and spread out. It was a little overwhelming!

Boxes of bisque ware on top of the shelf and all over the place!

I helped prepare some kiln furniture bricks, and then slipped and glazed some single-fire pieces. I have not done a lot of single-firing before, so I will be interested to see how these turn out and if the forms I made are conducive to single-firing.

Single-fire dishes with interior glazed, rim left unglazed so they can be stacked

Trying out a few forms with a brown slip

Tankard with brown slip

The firing is next weekend. I have two kiln shifts, and am really excited!