It was only a three day week because of the platinum jubilee, so I had to glaze and fire everything for Ceramic Wales. I panicked a bit when I came in on Monday, as the line blend test tiles had not been fired on Friday, so I could not glaze my pieces as planned. Cath put the tests in the test kiln, to be out on Tuesday afternoon. I had some porcelain pots for reduction firing but Cath said there weren't enough of them.
This meant that I would have to use oxidation glazes for the new set and the three existing pots, so I would only have one celadon piece to take to Wales, and a lot of blue and green. This is not really what I had hoped for, as it would look like lots of similar tones and colours, an issue I had with Uclay.
The temperature tests for the red clay body came out after firing at 1100 and 1200, and suggested the clay needs to be fired somewhere in between, so I have opted for 1160. These 'church fragment' pieces, based on All Saints, are in the test kiln. This is a good temperature for all three together as the ES40 still has a lot of white, the black is strong and the red has not yet gone too brown. I'm not sure whether these should have a clear glaze, there are some cone 2 or 3 on Glazy.
After bisque firing
There was good news with the line blends. I managed to get both the blue and green colours that I wanted. I made a base glaze and split it into three, for the three colours, and started the glazing. Cath told me to spray the tallest piece as it would need a lot of glaze to dip. The others were dipped, so I hope that the colour is consistent across the set. Fingers crossed.
On Wednesday Cath fired most of the glazed pots for ceramic wales, but not the 'unglazed' red black and cream pieces, nor half a dozen older pieces with the new glaze on. She said they will have to wait until Monday morning as the kiln is full. The bisque firing will also be out then, so I can glaze my final pieces.
UPDATE
The 'After Dark' street of stoneware pots for Ceramic Wales is out of the glaze firing and the glazes are too transparent, and have application problems. The glaze seems too thin, although the test tiles seemed ok. These pieces cannot now go to Wales. ( See image at top of page).
The closed forms were in a very tightly packed kiln. and one of them came out stuck to one of the new porcelain pieces. I managed to separate them, and Rob ground the glaze join down. I added more glaze and re-fired them. They are almost right, but not quite, so they cannot go either. The uneven roofline pots came out ok.
I have changed the specific gravity and glazed some older porcelain pots. These are going in today and I will see whether that works. I had not planned on taking these to Ceramic Wales, but they will have to go, otherwise I wont have very much to show.
Comments