Just over a week ago just two Raiders, Mina and Michelle, joined me for a work day. As it turned out their few plates just helped me to fill my kiln for a glaze firing of all my January work. I’ll show you their work first and then make another blog about my jugbirds and bowls.

As my guests busied themselves with underglazes and slab plates I was throwing some more yunomi with stoneware clay to add to my selection for an upcoming soda firing.

Mina chose two of her favourite large round platters, using a new jar of violet underglaze for one and black for the background of the other. These will be used for serving food.

Michelle painted one of the frying-pan square plates, making the underside rather more jolly than the top! You never really know how strong the colour contrast will be. She also painted a lunch plate in black with a surprise in the middle, and a tiny triangular dish.

Her daughter Tamara sent me a photo of one of her remarkable big platters in use at a party. Nice!

The ladies took me out to lunch at Port Moody’s excellent ‘Original’s’ Mexican restaurant. It is two blocks from our house, on Clarke street and is our closest eatery. The food was delicious and took me back to the flavours and smells of Puerto Vallarta. They have had some crockery made back in Mexico especially for this restaurant and I must say that the Mexican coffee in a latte was perfect! Thank you Mina and Michelle for a treat!

With less than perfect results using various low-fire clear glazes that I’d mixed up from recipes, I decided to try out Mayco’s commercial glaze. The bucket label for this dipping glaze (not brush-on) suggests that I bisque the clay to cone 04, and then fire the glazed ware to cone 06, with the thought that cone 05 might make it brighter and clearer.

So with some trepidation I did that with all the recent plates painted by Mina, Pierre, Michelle and Cindy, having tested it in a previous firing. This time I bisque-fired all the ware to cone 04 and I worried about how the glaze would adhere to a more matured clay body. I rinsed all the bisqued work to remove any dust. Next day I dipped each in the wide bowl of blue coloured glaze and am pleased with how it covered evenly. I took the glaze firing to cone 05 with no extended soak at the end, and then yesterday was SO pleased to find that all the pieces are smoothly and evenly glazed with the underglazes nicely enhanced.

I shall  fire my own work as I always do, with a bisque firing to cone 06 and a glaze firing to cone 04 with a 30 minute soak at the end, so, without Raiders’ plates I must accept waiting longer to fill my kiln.

My most recent Raiding visitors were Mina, Michelle, Cindy and Pierre.

Pierre stayed with his black and white theme, the big plate is D in his series.

Mina really likes the square plates so finished two more. I have to show the backs of them as they’re just as wild as the fronts. I like her choice to use green on the round one. There’s a photo of all the work on the day I took it out of the kiln, showing that all but Pierre chose to paint designs on the backs. So I glaze the plates all over and use stilts rather than wax resisting the bottoms and leaving those plates unglazed underneath.

Michelle and Cindy had a day of choosing subtle quiet colours.

We already have another Raid scheduled for next Friday so I’ve been making some more slab platters. Today I threw a large circle of clay to bisque fire and use for a mould for the large round plates. That’ll be easier than trying to use a glazed commercial plate to slump the slab into.

After an afternoon in the cool of my basement studio attaching handles to a number of jugbirds, I must now take myself down to Port Moody Arts Centre for the opening of Ceramic Artist in Residence Malory Tate’s year-end show. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Malory has been up to during her year here. There are two other shows opening tonight as well.

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Mina and Marlene braved the challenging road conditions to come out to Port Moody. Both had hoped to paint some more work for the next pair of firings I’m planning, and take the finished work in to town. Marlene brought out another plate Eric has been working on in the quiet of his own studio this week, but after finding road conditions here rather more horrible than in Vancouver she wisely opted for an above-freezing drive back home right away. Mina found the chance to get four more pieces painted too good to miss and did stay until after dark. By then the melting snow, and cleared paths and road had turned to sheer ice and the deep snow under her parked car almost had her staying here overnight! I’m sure Hastings street will have been clear once she left our side streets.

After a delicious lunch of pot au boeuf brought by Mina, and while she painted, Alan took his usual photos of everything in the kiln. With larger plates and my use of stilts on lots of them (thank you for those Ysy!) there seems to be lots of wasted space and two more had to be left out of the glaze firing. So I am happy to be loading more again tomorrow. My Raiders will be anxious to see their finished work. Mina has taken it all back to Vancouver for pick-up or delivery tomorrow but I’m posting some photos now.

Garry Neill Kennedy painted two platters and a smaller coupe in yellow and black only. He says they relate to his current show at VAG, so we’ll need to check that out.

Cathy Busby painted two larger platters on their Raid day but only one has been fired so far. Front and back say ‘Stand’ and ‘Land Protectors’.

Eric’s standard rimmed oval plate is another in his recognizable collection.

I’ll post photos of the other plates and platters in another blog or two, tomorrow.