Journey Sept 28 - Oct 4 September Firing

I have finally managed to correct the spelling fo Steven's name in the title of my blog - had to copy it all into a new blog that had Steven's name spelled correctly - Spent a lot of the week glazing for the gas firing we had on Friday. Pots came out on Sunday! Did quite a few glaze tests - using variations of the Rhodes 32 as well as well as Steven's Stoney Yellow and a few others. With Xmas coming up I threw some large "parade" garlic jars and butter dishes. Butter dishes are something that I find people come looking for. One customer in our Artisans Gallery mentioned it was her third butter dish as she had broken the other two.
I had put off finishing the last fishing lady-factory ship as the design was just getting too complicated and I was unhappy at how it was turning out. However on Thursday I decided that I had better finish it even if I did not like it as I had already put a lot of work into it.

I also decided to throw some oval lidded jars. At Center Street Clay Steven had showed us how he makes his rectangular jars and how he makes the lids for them. For the jars, he cuts off the pot (has a bottom) and then using flat paddles squeezes from both sides. For the lids he throws a flat pancake with deep throwing marks in the center. Once dried a bit the pancake is thrown and stretched. I decided to do oval jars as I wanted a less severe look - throwing them without a bottom , cutting and then lifting and shaping into an oval. I then placed them on a slab bottom. I will try to decorate them so that they fit in with my other stamped/appliqued work.



The firing gave mixed results again. The appliqued fishing lady - I had sprayed iron saturate on the figure from the side and wiped it off the top, hoping that would acuntuate the edges of the applied clay. I then sprayed it with Hannah ochre ash and Hannah blue. The front bottom past turned out just right, the rion satrate showed through a bit, showing the cut edges black, but it culd have been thicker so tht it would show up more. However for the upper part of the figure I had the glaze too thin - everything there looked burnt. However the back of the vase was just gorgeous. Everything was just right. Now if I can just repeat that. However after all that the pot cracked in the upper corner - it opened about 1/2 cm so obviously some stress there.
My one stamped fish plate - used a slightly lighter stoneware clay called smoothstone. Used an iron underglaze on the fish and wiped it off so tht it accentuated the stamps. I sprayed Aerni colour active slip with 3% CoCo3. The result was not too bad, though the glaze could have been thicker to get some running and a richer finish.
The tests that I did with Rhodes 32 - using 1% Cr and .8% Mn ended up rather stiff and do not break much over texture, unlike the base version of Rhodes. The Stoney Yellow was not too bad on pocelain but turned out too dark on the Prostone. The best test tile a B-Mix with Stoney Yellow with Rhodes 32 with Mn on top with ran and gave some crystalization.
I had also sprayed ash glazes - Leach Ash and Blue Van Gilder ash - again not much action on the Rhodes, the stoney Yellow ran bit bit and was not too bad.