January was a very quiet month for us, mainly with dreadful weather keeping us home-bound, so I had masses of time to be making new pots. By the first week of February I had done bisque firing and was liner glazing and wadding the ware. I delivered some twenty pots to Shadbolt Centre on Feb 8th.
Two days later, after everybody’s pots had been loaded into the Vault kiln on Thursday and the firing had started early on Friday morning, I joined others to help with inserting soda and to finish the firing. Here is Melanie holding a hot brick so that Sharon can spray soda. Then there I am carefully removing a draw ring.
We sprayed soda about every fifteen minutes from roughly 3.30pm to 5.30pm, removed draw rings from various spots, watched the temperature rise quite evenly and soon saw melting and orange peel. Once our leaders were sure that the cones had fallen satisfactorily all around the kiln, the gas was turned off and we left, to wait until Tuesday to see what we’d done.
Once the door was opened we saw that things looked juicy and colourful! Quickly the assembled potters lined up to share the excitement. One person removed a piece and it was passed along the line for studying and then placed on two long tables outside. It was a gorgeous sunny Winter day.
I’ll allow my photos to tell the story of the cooperative afternoon. We first removed pots from the front, scraped the shelves and applied fresh kiln wash, before we took all the rest of the pots from the floor and back shelves of the kiln. Here are all the pots waiting to be admired after the chores were done.
Before we all take our work home there’s always a time for questions. Linda and Tony offer advice and suggestions and explanations for our next foray into soda firing. We tell each other which flashing slips, glazes and techniques we’ve used.
Thank you, once again, to the Shadbolt Centre’s ceramics technicians for all the work involved in these firings: teaching newbies, organising the loading of our pots, doing the firing (we just do as we’re told when we show up to assist) and making the unloading and our shelf clean-up job all such fun. Joining this group is something I look forward to doing as often as I can.
Here at home I’ve been making notes on how my pots fared and I plan to take photos and show you some of them. I’m pleased to see that most of my twenty look just fine, with just two that I plan to re-fire in my next firing in June.
My next blog will feature a presentation to TriCity Potters last night by Robert’s Creek potter Jack Ploesser. Lovely work!
I’ve registered for space in the PGBC gas kiln for this Saturday so today I’ve been glazing with celadon and temmoku instead of taking photos. Working on pots keeps me happy!
Sounds wonderful Gillian. You are a busy gal.
I have fired in Jack’s kiln using his wonderful glazes and love his work. You folks were lucky to have him. I look forward to seeing what he is doing now. Your pots look great! I also love the two lanterns at he front of on of the pictures. Who makes these?
Sharon Reay made the lanterns