Potters Camp results 2007
The tale of Potters Camp will have to wait, but for now you can see the parts we brought home with us.
The lot.
The lot again.
Kit's pots first. These are from the gas reduction kilns. I centered, he threw, I trimmed, he glazed, I cleaned the bottoms.
Two little bowls he put into the soda kiln. Maybe 3 inches across.
Two little cups he put into the salt kiln.
Wood kiln.
On to my stuff! This is a small Fat Chick, probably only 4 inches tall. We made pinch pots on Thursday night to be fired in a bonfire on Saturday evening. made from a very heavily grogged low fire clay, they were stacked with a little wood and a lot grass and straw, and some ash to cover it all for insulation. And the pots really fired! It you tap her, she has that cooked pot "ting" sound.
These were fired in an above ground Roman kiln. Alas, I should have made something with terra cotta, because as it turns out, this technique converts the red iron to grey or black iron. As it is, my pots started white and just got black and grey from the wood smoke. But I like them anyway.
Kit interrupted regular photography to demonstrate his cup as it would be used.
Salt kiln. I was a bit uninspired here, and just used very simple glazes. Not a lot of variety.
Never the less, we'll have an excruciatingly close look at that.
On to the wood kiln. These are some little covered pots I made just to try out a technique I'd read about. You make the pot, seal the top closed so air pressure holds the shape, then do a serious indent on the side. When it gets leatherhard, you cut on the upper edge of the indent, and the lid falls into place, just so. I didn't do it particularly well, but I did figure out where I was going wrong. And in the mean time, they gave me something different from my usual stuff to fire at camp. These are wood fired.
These are also wood fired. The idea of this sort of firing is that the heat is all generated with wood, and that wood produces ash. Some of the ash settles on the pots and gets so hot that it forms a glaze of sorts. Not super shiny, but glass made of wood.
And now we move on to the soda kiln. It's a huge kiln, so I got a lot in. Here are the bowls. I like them.
And some mugs. And another one of those little covered pots.
I wasn't too thrilled with the results of the gas reduction kiln, but that's my own fault. I have a green glaze that I use in oxidation firings, but it's really a reduction glaze which sometimes pops red. The recipe itself is from the US. Ingredients available are not the same on different sides of the pond, so I wasn't sure what would happen in reduction with British ingredients. Red, yes, but a sort of liver brown-red. Yuck. And I used a lot of it.
Some bowls.
Here's a close-up of a larger bowl (for camp standards, maybe 8 inches across?) on which I used none of my green, but some of my rutile blue inside. It's one of the ones which had bubble wand indentations.
Camp notes and photos will have to follow another day.
The lot.
The lot again.
Kit's pots first. These are from the gas reduction kilns. I centered, he threw, I trimmed, he glazed, I cleaned the bottoms.
Two little bowls he put into the soda kiln. Maybe 3 inches across.
Two little cups he put into the salt kiln.
Wood kiln.
On to my stuff! This is a small Fat Chick, probably only 4 inches tall. We made pinch pots on Thursday night to be fired in a bonfire on Saturday evening. made from a very heavily grogged low fire clay, they were stacked with a little wood and a lot grass and straw, and some ash to cover it all for insulation. And the pots really fired! It you tap her, she has that cooked pot "ting" sound.
These were fired in an above ground Roman kiln. Alas, I should have made something with terra cotta, because as it turns out, this technique converts the red iron to grey or black iron. As it is, my pots started white and just got black and grey from the wood smoke. But I like them anyway.
Kit interrupted regular photography to demonstrate his cup as it would be used.
Salt kiln. I was a bit uninspired here, and just used very simple glazes. Not a lot of variety.
Never the less, we'll have an excruciatingly close look at that.
On to the wood kiln. These are some little covered pots I made just to try out a technique I'd read about. You make the pot, seal the top closed so air pressure holds the shape, then do a serious indent on the side. When it gets leatherhard, you cut on the upper edge of the indent, and the lid falls into place, just so. I didn't do it particularly well, but I did figure out where I was going wrong. And in the mean time, they gave me something different from my usual stuff to fire at camp. These are wood fired.
These are also wood fired. The idea of this sort of firing is that the heat is all generated with wood, and that wood produces ash. Some of the ash settles on the pots and gets so hot that it forms a glaze of sorts. Not super shiny, but glass made of wood.
And now we move on to the soda kiln. It's a huge kiln, so I got a lot in. Here are the bowls. I like them.
And some mugs. And another one of those little covered pots.
I wasn't too thrilled with the results of the gas reduction kiln, but that's my own fault. I have a green glaze that I use in oxidation firings, but it's really a reduction glaze which sometimes pops red. The recipe itself is from the US. Ingredients available are not the same on different sides of the pond, so I wasn't sure what would happen in reduction with British ingredients. Red, yes, but a sort of liver brown-red. Yuck. And I used a lot of it.
Some bowls.
Here's a close-up of a larger bowl (for camp standards, maybe 8 inches across?) on which I used none of my green, but some of my rutile blue inside. It's one of the ones which had bubble wand indentations.
Camp notes and photos will have to follow another day.