We were pleased with the orange peel and colours overall but I expect we reserved real study until after we each got home. Very quickly the pieces were lifted out, from both front and back, and set on the long table. There was some time to consider other people’s ideas, shapes and colours, but amazingly we were on our way to the first ferry by about 11 am.

Just as we do at the Shadbolt soda firings, we donned masks and gloves and speedily tackled the scraping of shelves. Kiln wash was applied to them and to door bricks and left to dry. Jackie was making fresh cone packs for her next firing while we packed up all our goodies. Jackie took Helen’s pieces back to West Vancouver for her.

Packing our belongings and clearing out the kitchen was done efficiently and all that was left to do was say our farewells.

Thank you Jackie for including me in this, your ninth firing of this kiln. You know I’ve been hoping to have some more pieces fired solely in salt for a while, and I shall treasure these pots. Most are intended just for me, or for gifts – although some may find their way to Circle Craft one day soon. Today I checked my notes and have learned more about which of your sprayed slips produce which colour. Coincidentally I heard from Fredi at Shadbolt that I can register for a soda firing in November so I will now have a number of new ideas to try out in that kiln, with soda. I did enjoy the workshop, noting Jackie’s meticulous process in preparing work, kiln loading and the firing, as well as the throwing demonstrations. The required waiting time for the kiln to cool was not a hardship in such a beautiful setting. I feel as if I have had a great getaway, fine food, really comfortable accommodation, plus we fired a salt kiln. Sounds like the perfect holiday!

Thank you also to Tidal Art Centre founder and owner Nancy Jeakins and her husband Gordon. I did enjoy getting to know you, and really am awed by the beautiful art centre you have created. I hope I shall have an excuse to find it again one day, to see a show in the gallery or check out the evolution of the clay facilities.

My drive home was fine. I only stopped in at Sliammon village to see the canoes lined up for races, found a store selling locally made clothing in the ‘townsite’ market by Powell River mill and met the other potters at each of the ferry line-ups.

It’s been a busy week here in Port Moody, which included the bisque firing of a dozen plates, and today six ‘Raiders’ were here all day to paint said plates. Some will need to be glaze-fired asap to be included in our upcoming show on Bowen Island in August.

Tomorrow I’ll try to find time to post good photos of all my sixteen salty pieces. Glad Al took them as I have allowed one to go to its new home in Strathcona this afternoon!

While the temperature in the kiln was rising to cone 9 over the course of the day Jackie offered to demonstrate how she throws her distinctive forms, with Bmix clay.

Elizabeth wanted to drive the short distance into Lund for supplies and I asked to accompany her. I was keen to explore the hamlet. We headed for Nancy’s Bakery which is well-known for its gigantic cinnamon buns but before buying a possible lunch we spotted a sign for ‘Rare Earth Pottery’ nearby. We walked along the boardwalk and followed the signs up a flight of steps to a road above, and another, and found potter Jan Lovewell holding the fort in the showroom she shares with her husband and fellow potter Ron Robb. When tourists aren’t around the charming space reverts to being a pottery studio. Elizabeth and I thoroughly enjoyed our visit with the pair, and hearing about how they used to live on Okeover Arm but couldn’t build their longed-for wood kiln. When moving to Lund and wondering how to make use of the bricks they’d acquired, Pia Sillem and Jinny Whitehead invited them to share in the building and use of a kiln on Pia’s property some miles south (and a ferry trip) near Earl’s Cove. So a couple of times a year the pair take their wheel-thrown and hand-built wares down there to join others to fire the wood kiln. Otherwise their rattles and ocarinas are raku-fired in the adjacent area where Ron has his separate studio.

http://rareearthpottery.ca/about-rare-earth/

Thank you for our time with you, Jan and Ron, for the lift back down to Lund, and for the beaker and mug we brought back to use in Tidal Art Centre and take home. It was nice to see the pair stop by for the opening of the salt kiln three days later.

When we returned to TAC the group was already eating lunch. We missed the first demonstration but in the afternoon Jackie continued with more throwing and then assembling the morning’s pieces.

Later on I opted to take a walk that the others had recommended. I followed the road, which quickly became gravel, further north and then back around to follow the coast on the out-side of the Finn Bay peninsula. The sun was out, temp was just right and I found Diver’s Rock almost at the end of the road. It’s a steep but somewhat maintained scramble down to some smooth rocks, arbutus trees, cavorting chipmunks and a view West of the strait of Georgia, Savary and Cortez Islands and in the distance Vancouver Island. Bliss!

Supper time was also time to start salting so we opted to take a table outside the kiln shed and eat between saltings. Our easy meal was cold turkey, stuffing and cranberry sauce brought by Elizabeth, salads and carrot cake and pineapple!

Introducing salt in one pound doses on a fat halved bamboo stick, in each of two front peep holes, five times, for a total of ten pounds, didn’t seem to take long at all. We put the salt in, quickly doused the stick in a deep barrel of water and left the salt to swoosh through the kiln for ten minutes. Then there were ten minutes of clearing before adding the next dose. Towards the end Jackie had us remove just two draw rings. She was happy with the melt so after ten pounds we stopped salting, cleared the air and by about 10pm the kiln was turned off. Cone 11 was soft.

Then we had to wait until the following Tuesday morning to open the kiln ie all day Sunday and Monday!

I left Madeira Park around 9am for the wiggly half-hour drive to Earl’s Cove and was in good time for the 10.35am ferry to Saltery Bay, a fifty minute run. With only a brief stop at a viewpoint just south of Powell River it took just over an hour to arrive at the end of the road in Lund. The sign says it all.

Actually Finn Bay, the home of Tidal Art Centre, is a few minutes further north on a minor road. After that the roads are gravel. Parking is a problem in the hamlet of Lund as any further travel is by water taxi, to nearby Savary Island and to Redondo, Cortez and other islands further north.

https://www.tidalartcentre.com/about

Transforming a dilapidated Forestry station into a fabulous, best quality Arts Centre has been a project of its owner Nancy Jeakins for some twenty years. With the help of highly skilled woodworkers, concrete formers, metal workers and a gardener Nancy has now begun to inhabit her dream art space with visiting artists, workshops and a gallery. She invited her friend, well-known salt potter Jackie Frioud, to build her own salt kiln as the first kiln in a renovated and fire-proofed garage/kiln shed. It is Jackie’s personal kiln and is not huge, so we five people who registered for her workshop are very privileged to have had the chance to have some work fired in her well-controlled salt kiln, in its 9th firing. I believe there are plans to install a gas kiln and some electric kilns along with a group of wheels. So there will be further workshops in the spanking-new ceramic room in the future.

When I arrived Jackie had the kiln all ready to be filled, with the shelves kiln-washed and cone packs and draw rings dry. I was shortly joined by Carol Demers, Anthea Cameron and Elizabeth Claridge, all of whom work out of Gleneagles Community Centre ceramics department and have known Jackie for years. Missing was Helen Weiser who was, sadly, unable to join us but Jackie had brought her pots along. We had all had our pots sprayed with Jackie’s flashing slips at her Mergatroid building studio in Vancouver and she’d bisque-fired them. I had brought mine back home to apply liner Shino glaze and brought the sixteen pots up the highway with me.

We quickly unpacked our pieces, arranging them according to height, and in no time we had loaded everything into the kiln and were ready for a cuppa. Made with my loose-leaf English breakfast tea in one of Jackie’s large salty tea-pots it was time to get to know each other and admire the incredible facilities in the main building. There’s a well-equipped kitchen, large eating/meeting area, lounge, big print-making studio, bathrooms and MY bedroom! That’s upstairs. The lower level houses offices, the clay room and a gallery. A tower structure houses an elevator so Nancy has considered everybody’s convenience for future workshop participants. Rose cottage next door has single bedrooms and is where the others stayed. All this is set on a little plateau well above the tide line but with a splendid view of Finn Bay. While we drank tea a sudden, fierce and loud storm passed over but we were cosy.

After bricking up the kiln with two layers of bricks and Jackie testing the burners (four) we withdrew to the main building again for welcoming ‘negronis’ made by Anthea and the first of potluck suppers. Jackie had brought a home-made lasagne, so with meatloaf contributed by Nancy’s husband Gordon and salad, wine or cider and fruit our four days were set to begin.

Next blog will show photos of the firing and some of Jackie’s wheel-throwing demonstrations.