Pots and Fire

Friday I ran a bisque kiln, fired to Cone 05, at the community college, and I unloaded it today. A couple of students had made thick pots, but I was assured the clay was well wedged and the pots had been drying for a month, so I put them in the kiln reluctantly.

I opened the kiln this morning to find that three pots really exploded, and two others had large pieces of the thickened areas flake off. I'm sorry I didn't take a picture - most of the pots that broke were on the top shelf of the kiln and it really made a mess. Fortunately, no pots made by other students were damaged by the ones that broke. This is a good experience for me - when I am teaching next semester, I will have this immediate information to emphasize and enforce the "Skillful potters make thin-walled pots, and only thin-walled pots get fired!" rule.

I then loaded the kiln with low-fire glazed ware, and am now firing the kiln to Cone 06. I had reservations about some of these pots also - I washed the bottoms of a couple of them which had raw glaze smeared on them, and stilted several of them. Hopefully it will all come out ok. We are very low on kiln furniture - need to order a wider variety of stilts and props.

Tomorrow, I will unload the low-fire ware, and run a Cone 6 kiln. I will take pictures of the unloading and reloading process.

This whole process is satisfying to me in a very basic way. Here is a picture of one of my favorite pots that I have made since starting doing pottery again. This pot has Cone 5 glazes on it, but I think it got over-fired a bit - the normally stable grey glaze on the base of the pot got more runny and shiny than usual. You can see one of the fat little drips. I like that effect when I get it on purpose, but accidently, it is a puzzle.