Before I headed out with fellow TriCity Potters Shelley Bondheim and Gay Mitchell last Tuesday I loaded glazed plates and jugbirds into their electric firing and turned the kiln on to heat slowly. We three arrived at the Shadbolt Centre’s ‘Steam Plant’ for 3pm and were quickly joined by nearly all of the other participants in last week’s soda firing.

Jay and Tony finally opened the door and we all got our first look at the results of fifteen keen soda students’ work. Generally I’d say that we had a very good firing. Soda can produce so many different surfaces and colours, depending on the amount of reduction and how much soda is introduced. We kept the kiln more in oxidation than reduction so avoided the greys that some soda folk really look for, but the colours are brighter this way. There will be discussions about when to stop the introduction of soda. We had enough in this firing, after using all the prepared soda ash/water mix.

As usual a line formed, and with the rain delaying its arrival, we passed the pots along the line to be considered before they were arranged on tables outside. Lots of oohs and aahs.

You’ll see the variety of colours and forms in these photos. Eliza Wang’s square plates turned out just right and Sharon Reay’s animated tree stump is humorous and has the best tree bark surface. Mariana Wong took my photo again, this time with my tall bird vessel. It survived the firing very well.

Half way through unloading and again at the end, before we could stand and admire our pots, we were expected to do our share of shelf clean-up. Wearing masks and eye protection to avoid flying glass we scraped off deposited glass bubbles and painted the shelves with more kiln wash, ready for the next group’s soda firing.

I’ll get Al to take individual photos of my work this weekend but there’s just one here which shows all the pieces I had in this group firing. We had just over 1 1/2 cubic feet each, and then extra pots that some of us hoped would be included for a second go-round all got in. The blue-slipped pots on the right of my photo were soda-fired for a second time and I’m pleased that they are much improved. Sometimes the soda doesn’t reach all around the pots and re-firing them with the dry areas facing the incoming flame and soda blast just does the trick.

I don’t know when I shall have a chance to join a soda-firing next but we did ask Jay to book our group for a 3rd annual firing next April. Meanwhile, after I’ve made some of my usual red earthenware pieces and some more white plates for Raiders, I shall make some special stoneware pieces for a salt firing workshop in July.

More earthenware plates are now finished, along with two more Rhytons and some jugbirds so I’ll show them in my next blog.