October 2022 Wood Kiln Firing

Here are the snapshots of the tea bowls as they came out of the kiln on Tuesday. They still need some cleaning up and possibly a few will be re-fired. Since I took these photos with my phone, there’s a bit of distortion of the shapes; the forms all look better in person, but I wanted to get a profile of the organic top edge of the cups.

Because I was short on time and energy, I made a bunch of tea bowls for this kiln - fast, unfussy, and of a size that I was likely to get most into the kiln. I plan to make some larger, more involved pieces for our second firing next month.

Clays are Laguna’s B-Mix for wood and Rocky Mountain’s CM-1. B-Mix is white clay that flashes orange in wood; CM-1 is a red clay that turns warm brown. Additionally, I used clay slip texture on the tea bows, which “catches” ash in the kiln and produces a rich surface. The bowls are all glazed with Dresang shino as a liner, and then splashed on the exterior of the bowls. I also splashed the exteriors with an Oribe glaze, but it was too thin and there’s very little color from it. You can see a bit of red on some of the cups; that’s the Oribe’s copper content in a reduction atmosphere. It also means that the atmosphere of the kiln trended toward reduction.

I’m pretty happy overall; the clay colors are great, and the shapes and textures are nice in the hand. I would have liked more Oribe action, but I’ll increase the thickness of my Oribe glaze and will have better results. There are a few that are kind of crusty and need some finishing and one really nice one has kiln debris (pieces of someone else’s pot) stuck inside of it. <sighs> We’ll see what they look like after I get to work on them.

Once they’re cleaned up, they will be available for sale. I generally charge $29 for tea bowls (chawan or yunomi), but with the high “firing cost” (that is, the cost of the class), I’m likely putting $35 on each of these. They will be available at the Arvada Pop-Up Holiday Market, at ACG Guild’s Holiday Sale at ACC, and at the BCFM Winter Market in Longmont.

Those fire arts...

Maybe it’s because of my Zodiac sign, but I’ve always been into the “fire arts” - metalsmithing, glass, ceramics.

This month I enrolled in the wood kiln class at ACC; it’s kind of the pinnacle of “fire arts”, involving heavy work, lots of lumber, flames, and incandescence. This isn’t my first rodeo; I’ve taken a prior wood kiln class and have placed pottery in the wood kiln every semester that I’ve been a student in the ACC Ceramics program. Taking classes is very important to me; I get to expand my own skillset and knowledge, and I also receive very helpful formal direction and feedback about my work. After several years of skill-building, I’ve been trying to find my artistic voice recently and I think that this is going to be a valuable step in that direction.

Our assignment this semester is shino glazes, and so we’re exploring types (traditional/Japanese style, carbon trap/American style, and high alumina shinos) and how each performs in various places in the ACC train kiln. I’m particularly interested in shino glazes, and so this meets my needs well. I’m also interested in oribe glazes, and so I’ll be working with those soon too; “working with” meaning mixing test batches, and then testing over and over again.

Our usual process is to run the salt kiln at the same time we fire the wood kiln, so this is a great opportunity to mix up some cone 6 oribe glazes and see how they work.

Oribe glazes are heavy in copper carbonates and oxides, and so they’re kind of spendy. (Conversely, shinos have no coloring oxides, so they’re cheap to make!) While I don’t mind spending cash on production glazes, it’s nice to be able to use the oxides at ACC to test out the oribes.

Yesterday was spent working on class work - I mixed up shinos and a slip for testing, and started throwing some crunchy tea bowls that I think will look great in a wood firing. They’re going to be “potter’s pots” - I don’t expect them to be particularly appealing to the average ceramics buyer, but the potter who walks into my tent is the target audience. I’ve also started creating some forms for large slab vase forms which will be cool side-fired. I have plans for kurinuki plates and vases, and kohiki surfaces. Lots of facets and textures to grab all that ash in the kiln; lots of work to be done. And hopefully sold this Holiday season.

I’ll be posting photos, of course - here are some pictures of the process from former firings. Our instructor Vicky Smith is the person standing in the third photo.

To day job, or to not

I have a day job. It covers the rent and provides valuable benefits.

One of those benefits is a lot of PTO every year, since I’m a long-term employee at my company. This comes in handy for the pottery job.

I took a week off from the day job this month, and spent it in the studio instead. I do this from time to time, usually a couple of days here and there or a long weekend to do a large art show. Each time it becomes a little more apparent how easy it could be to walk away from the day job. I had far less anxiety working in the studio, and it was better for my body than sitting in front of a computer all day. Art is also far more engaging than the day job, so there are brain benefits, too.

I’m not yet at retirement age, and I don’t have enough 401(k) to actually retire. But if something should happen… well I’m not saying that I won’t retire from corporateland early, in order to work at the better job.

In the kiln

The past few days have been spent in prep for loading a kiln.

This is a mid-range firing, so the kiln is a large electric kiln, fired to cone 6. This means that the wares will be very colorful, but it also means lots and lots of time invested in glazing. Too much time, really. But that’s the subject of another post…

I had been producing mostly hand-built work for this firing; charcuterie/cheese platters and coordinating serving wares, vases and wall pockets. I did get some noodle and serving bowls thrown, and they’re in the kiln too. I finished the glazing as I was loading the kiln last night, and managed to get it started right on schedule. I’m a little anxious about this firing, since this particular kiln has been underfiring my schedule by about a cone. So I increased the maturation temp to 2232 degrees F, and reduced the hold… and I hope that I don’t have glaze running off my wall pockets. <crosses fingers> <bites nails> We’ll see when I unload tomorrow.

Getting one of the main glazes proved to be a problem, so I didn’t get everything glazed, but that’s okay - there wouldn’t have been room for it in the kiln anyway. Still, I will have a lot of fresh stock this coming weekend, including blue noodle bowls.

Surface printed charcuterie and cheese tray, with matching ramekins

Fast glaze

When I was in school, I was a cone 10 girl. It’s traditional, it’s durable, there are oodles and oodles of reliable glazes. The colors are rich, but they’re muted and subtle. Cone 10 glazes are quiet glazes. Understated.

When I went out on my own, the studio that I joined only had electric kilns so I had to learn to use mid-range glazes, and fast. The “triple constraint” of fast-cheap-good says that you can choose two of the three; I chose fast and good - commercial glazes (fast), for reliable and frankly stunning (good) outcomes.
They’re really not cheap. They’re expensive to source and they are super time-consuming to apply.
Still, they’re really appealing to the hand-made pottery consumer.

Particularly blue. “Buy Me” blue. “Cash” blue. Blue is the “Color of Money”. Blue sells.

The special power of mid-range glazes is COLOR. Lots of rich, saturated, appealing colors. Reds and purples and greens - and of course a wide palette of blues. Many potters convert to mid-range glazes just for the color. And of course, the colors are popular with consumers. I started mixing my own mid-range dipping glazes last year, but the results weren’t outstanding, so I kept to the “fast” path. But that’s had it’s own challenges.

I haven’t had much blue pottery available for sale this year due to supply shortages. And there really is no end in sight.

So I picked up the Amazing Glaze books, and now am getting excited about mixing my own glazes again.

Mixing one’s own glazes has a lot of benefits, not the least of which is lower costs both in terms of materials, but also in the time it takes to apply glaze. But there’s time invested in testing and tweaking, and to be honest right now it’s important to produce.
I hope that I can find space to diverge from this “fast” path, because once I get over the hump, I think that it will improve my pottery life. It will be valuable to add “hand-made glazes” to my sales pitch.

The current challenge is deciding which glazes to start with.

Aurora Borealis noodle bowl