Pages

▼

26 January 2019

Studio Saturday

Getting pots ready for "Aurora"s first firing -

 In...
 ... and out ...
The cones show that it would be a good idea to try a lower temperature, 1220 perhaps, and save some electricity. This firing used 11.6 kWh.

Some results - using fabric strips and oddments of wire -



No metal, just gathered synthetic fabric and heat-setting
The rest -

All very light=fragile; one crumbled when I picked it up. Next time, thicker slip!

at

4 comments:

  1. :Diane27 January 2019 at 13:10

    Doesn't this kiln have a auto shut off that uses a cone? Decades ago, I used one that was pretty manual and a cone was placed between little metal fingers, when it melted enough that the top finger dropped, the kiln turned off.

    Your inside cones look dangerously melted. Our goal was to have the test cone inside just curl its top over slightly. Extremely high temps could have caused a complete meltdown of the glazes or even slumping of the clay... yikes! That would have been a mess inside. I've had to chip glaze off shelves when students put on too much glaze all the way to the bottom of the pot and we hadn't stilted it properly. Not fun.

    Diane

    ReplyDelete
  2. Margaret Cooter27 January 2019 at 16:50

    Diane, the cones are obviously much too melted, and I know I should have used a range to get a better idea of the actual temperature, but we had only the 1260 degree cones (stoneware / porcelain) on hand. We were looking to find out if different parts of the kiln might have slightly different temperatures - well, that didn't work! The electronic controller has an automatic shut-off, that seems to be standard these days, and next time I'll be able to reprogram it so the top temperature is lower - hopefully the cones will be ok then, and the porcelain also. Experimentation continues!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cate Rose27 January 2019 at 17:12

    These are great!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Charlton Stitcher28 January 2019 at 16:37

    What a delightful series of twisted and gently leaning forms are appearing. This use of porcelain is fascinating. I threw pots via a class at a local pottery studio when we lived in Hertfordshire for about 10 years in the 1980s and 1990s. Occasionally, we were encourgaged to use porcelain clay and I have a few little morsels left from that time. It was a real pleasure and I regret that I didn't find the same freedom to experiment without pressure where we live now and so gave up - though I think I'd struggle to find the time now. You are amazingly productive!

    ReplyDelete