I've been working with cone 10 clays this week, making pots for a wood-firing that's planned for October. This time I am not the teacher ... my friend Karen Arrington has taken over this workshop for the Greenbelt Community Center ... and I am one of the students. I'm really happy that I still get to wood-fire with my favorite fellow stokers.
All of these pots were thrown with Helios Porcelain and brushed with a gray flashing slip on their exteriors, except for the jar lids. I plan to glaze the interiors with celadon. I made a few small pots last year with this approach, and it resulted in all of my favorite shades of gray and brown. And I'm dying to try it again.
All of these pots were thrown with Helios Porcelain and brushed with a gray flashing slip on their exteriors, except for the jar lids. I plan to glaze the interiors with celadon. I made a few small pots last year with this approach, and it resulted in all of my favorite shades of gray and brown. And I'm dying to try it again.
These pots were thrown with Highwater Phoenix. Oh how I love to throw Phoenix. When I throw large and precise forms, sometimes my usual stoneware is like "uh I'm not so sure" but Phoenix is always like "LET'S DO THIS!"
Here are the Phoenix pots trimmed, brushed with porcelain slip, then carved with lots of skinny vertical lines.
With the rest of my Phoenix clay, I threw small bottle forms. Aside from brushing porcelain slip on the larger ones, I will leave these undecorated, and try to place them in the "heavy snot" zones of the kiln. Ash snot or salt snot, I like them both.
Now of course comes the hard part ... trying not to anticipate how they will look when they emerge from the kiln. If you don't think that sounds hard, you've never done it. It is a serious mind bender, and probably the most challenging and important aspect of wood-firing: accepting the limits of one's control. Funny thing is, the first time I was exposed to this mental challenge, my mind was blown open and I saw how much bigger and greater the subject of pottery is. Or another way of putting it, if you think you can control everything, you will confine yourself to making only mediocre pots. This is one of the reasons why I make time for wood-firing about once a year, in order to keep my perspective clear. I sometimes say "it's the closest thing to religion in my world."
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