Sunday, July 04, 2010

Happy Fourth of July, Everyone !


I spent almost all day Friday and Saturday glazing pots to put into my first real "Honest-to-Goodness-Potter" kiln firing. My plan was to make this Fourth of July really special by firing "Gridley" for the first time on Sunday. I comandeered Henry's shelves to store my pots until I was ready to put them into the kiln. (I suspect the shared-space issue has encouraged him to get Jim to build my studio FAST!) There were 36 pieces, but I couldn't get the last five in... so I have a head start on the next load!

The pinky-white clay has been fired to the "bisque" stage (like the porcelain dolls) it is still quite fragile and needs to have glaze put on it before I fire it again. In this form it is quite useless.


The plates had the honor of being the first items into the kiln, as I wanted to start with the short stuff. There are two layers of ware under 2" tall. The 'spots' are my versions of test tiles... actually they will be decorative rocks for my houseplants. I put glazes I am trying out onto small bowls, which I will probably give away, so I need a record of what the glazes look like and making some pretty rocks seemed like a good solution.






This is the last, top shelf... I think I need 2" of clearance below the top for air-flow, and the tall urn is actually 8" tall. The kiln looks pretty empty to me! Actually, not filling the kiln all the way worked out just fine, as I hadn't made the second set of shelves ready to fire yet. Still in the box.

Tomorrow I'll unload and show you how the work came out. I hope it is OK and not all wonky! I'm really nervous.

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