So Where Do the Pots go....

Well hopefully to good homes.....

But, our Community Studio is focused on Building Community for our Artists and then teaching ceramics.  Lastly is the issue of selling the ceramics. I say ceramics as I am one of several potters but there are other Ceramic Artists who are doing sculpture and other things.

Because of this, our sales are slow because they are not a priority. We discussed over the course of the summer and into the winter if we wanted to change this.  Our decision was, no. We want to keep our focus on community and teaching as the primary area and sales as secondary.

While I am exploring some additional options for sales, there is the issue that I only have so much time and energy anyway and I work a full time job.

On a FB group "Pottery Geeks", there was a mention of breaking and throwing things that did not meet standard.  While I do this too... there are some pieces that are better labeled "seconds". We have a second sale out of the community studio in April.  I have a few pieces from the last firing that have Flaws. Some had an issue with an experimental glaze that really needs to be used a lot thinner than I realized. So there was some crawling.  I had a platter where a piece of kiln wash seems to have fallen on it, now sealed into the glaze.

but the three largest bowls, with crawling, were given to the Doggz.  The other bowl is one that I rejected due to a bloat and gave it to the doggz already.

Anarchist Glaze and a Kiln Unloading

So first, we dealt with two Anarchist Glazes. These are from the residue bucket and have a mix of who knows what glaze and for how long they have been there?!
So they were sieved (two of them) and named, without knowing what they look like fired.

If you look closely at the bowls you will see "A Moment Caught In Time", one of these glazes. It is a green but turns blue with Fuzzy White over it.  The run of ever increasing bowls was glaze fired with this combo.

You can see the goblets or chalices or whatever you want to call them.  The green inside is from Celadon and on that one the rim as Blue Fur. All the other glaze is Fuzzy White.  You can see the significant impact the Iron Oxide slip had on this.

So this leaves us the slab platters. These were filed with the Blue Chun that I was unhappy with. Due to testing, I caught that before this was all fired and did a bit of fuzzy white on top of that as well.  This fixed it. There is just a little light blue under the glaze and you can see the slip and glaze design clearly.

Another Step towards Testing.

So we did the test tiles and fired them Bisque

Each are numbered by creating a deep design. This will allow the test to show how glaze pools on such designs.
The right side was painted with Iron Oxide, this will show how the glaze does or does not show such markings.

Each tile was dipped for three seconds. Then on third up dipped a second time for another three seconds. And finally, the top third dipped a third time for a final three seconds.
This will show how the amount of glaze changes the look.

Each glaze selected are typical or standard glazes used at Cup & Bowl.  None of our new experimental glazes were utilized.  I will now fire this un the soda kiln at the end of the month.

One Platter down...

here is one platter.

This was the Rutile Green over Amber.

Todays quick stuff..

I hate the cold, I really do. And it was a flash of winter around here again.  But the yard of the studio/gallery looks very pretty this way.

So I went in and trimmed the bowls, the smallest one got chipped, so I dumped it into reclaim.

So here is the last platter.  I got too cold to be able to glaze yesterday so I did not finish this one.  It is the platter where I damaged the slip design so I scraped it off and figured I would glaze it with a dark glaze and it would cover any of the markings.  So here the red is actually ^6 Amber, and the white is ^6 Rutile Green.

Here is a cup that someone else made, but it is that same glaze use.  So, roughly speaking, this is what  will happen to the platter.

Bowls..

So, I measured out 10 oz, 1#, 2#, 3#, 4#, 5#, and 6# of my reclaim clay.  I set out to make bowls that looked roughly the same way.  The form, well I didn't quite make it look like a matching set.  I will glaze them the same.

More Glaze

So today I glazed these platters, as they came out of the Bisque kiln today.  I did some design with Slate Blue, a ^6 matte glaze.  It's typically pretty boring in my opinion, by itself.  I then painted the Chun glaze I made the last week.  So this will be a test fire of this new glaze.  I put in on the shelf for the Electric Oxidation Glaze fire. This will likely be in about two days.

We made another glaze. This is from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes, and so is food safe.  There it is listed as an oxidation glaze but I have it else where as a reduction glaze.  I glazed a small bowl with it and put it in for the next oxidation firing.  Below is the tea set and mugs. The liner is the Chun glaze and the outside is the new glaze, Raw Sienna.  It is a brownish black glaze, we will see how it turns out.  I set these aside for the Soda Reduction firing at the end of the month.

So today it was very cold. I did not think I was going to be able to make the glaze as I had planned.  The glaze room is not very warm and at 19*F my hands are not real good.  I had a partner in crime however, who measured it out and brought the dry glaze in the studio. I was able to mix and sieve it.