Pottery post

[morgaina]

Lewiston was 104F. we successfully raised the area temperature even more by doing a raku firing. As in the past years, it was a lot of fun (clay, friends, controlled danger) but no really amazingly outstanding pots resulted. I got a nice vase, hard to take photos of it because it is shiny with luster; and got about 3 OK medalions and quite a few non-OK, which is OK. We did the raku in the top hat kiln we have used before but Michael, the genius, is constructing tiny kilns for each of us for future firings.

This little guy is about 2' tall, but reaches 1900F. It runs on a small bottle of propane and will hold 1 pot then can be reduced in the same kiln after reaching temperature.


This is Michael pulling the pots out of the kiln. Carolyn is standing by to spray her pot with air to cause the glaze to crackle before putting it in the reduction material.


Carolyn has just thrown paper on the molten pot, so this is the nano-second before it bursts into flame. On second thought, I believe the flaming happened and she is choking off the oxygen.


This is Judith doing an interesting technique. Rather than plunging it into organic material, when the pot is hot out of the kiln horse hair is dropped/placed onto the hot pot. It burns of course, leaving a carbon line that is permanent. The pot to the right has some excellent horsehair burns on it too.

*wonders if Cookie, Hondo, or Copper Penny would like to be memorialized this way?*

Comments

[katanubis.livejournal.com]

Thankyou. That's fascinating!

[copper-oxide.livejournal.com]

You're welcome :-)
It's a very exciting process because of the molten glazes and the necessity to work rapidly and efficiently. Then we never know exactly what the pots will look like and there is a higher possibility they will break during the firing because of the extreme conditions.