On the very day that we arrived home from England I was notified that an extra Soda Firing Workshop had been arranged at Shadbolt Centre because there were so many people on the waiting list. Of course I signed up there and then. But it meant that I needed to make my two cubic feet of ware between then, late September, and now. In the meantime I took the exciting trip over to Salt Spring Island for SSICA and prepared for and gave a workshop to Semiahmoo Potters. I told the ever patient ‘Raiders’ that there would be no Raid until after the Soda firing has happened.
Today I drove over to Burnaby with my three boxes of bisque-fired stoneware pieces, roughly two cubic feet worth. I’ve made some more jugbirds, similar to the one that now lives on Salt Spring, invented an Odd Bird Teapot and experimented with the idea of a Greek Rhyton. Other pieces are functional mugs and yunomis, a vase and some possible gifties. I’ve made a note of which flashing slips and liner glazes I’ve applied to each piece so that I can learn some more about colour possibilities in soda.
Here are some photos of work made on a couple of throwing days and then the pieces that are assembled from the shapes.
In the kiln shed the other workshop participants were busily spraying flashing slips (I’d sprayed mine at home prior to the bisque firing to ease transportation and glazing) and applying glazes. I have mainly chosen to use my own Shino glaze for lining as, when applied thinly, it produces a fine orange. But I was keen to use samples of Shadbolt ‘Teesha’ and ‘Robin’s Clear’ on just a few so did that first. Jay MacLennan was giving advice to the group, some of whom haven’t done a soda firing before, on slips, glazes and wadding.
As I happily rolled out balls of Jay’s excellent wadding and glued them to the undersides of my pieces I realized that this is what makes me happy. Feeling the shapes of my wheel-thrown pieces, checking glaze application and leaving the ware carefully on the shelves next to the soda kiln .. there’s nothing else to worry about! Tomorrow I’ll leave the loading to the team there – we aren’t allowed to load our own pieces anyway.. it’s in the lap of the gods, or my fellow participants!
On Friday I’ll be at the kiln in the afternoon, after the team leaders have taken the kiln up to roughly cone 8 and we’ll take it in turns to spray in the soda mixture for a couple of hours. Then it’ll be turned off and left to cool for DAYS! i.e. next Wednesday.
It’ll be hard to wait to see how my spraying, painting and glazing have worked but I have lots to do in the meantime. Raiders are coming out next Tuesday and I need to make a few more white earthenware plates and platters for them. The plates will help to fill the kiln and will be fired along with a few more red earthenware jugbirds that are sitting around here waiting to be painted. If there’s time I shall go ahead and do a glaze firing as well because the tiles Semiahmoo Potters painted with me are waiting for that. There’ll be lots of photos coming up!
