The Joy of Pottery

Here is a two figure work by one of the advanced students, that came out of the kiln on Sunday. These are about 18 inches tall, quite impressive in person. It is such a delight to have the kiln working - the students are applying themselves with gusto to finishing up their projects. It is a pleasure to watch them moving confidently about the studio, designing and producing works with a sense of control most of them did not believe they would acquire at the beginning of the semester.

Kiln Problems

I'll give an update on the ceramics studio here. The students glazed all the lovely bisque ware that came out of the kiln, but when I did a glaze firing two weeks ago, the pieces came under-fired. We have been running the kiln in the old studio based on the electronic readings, but this time, the electronic review said the kiln had attained 2232 degrees, when it was obvious that many of the pots in the bottom of the kiln had not gotten anywhere close to that temperature. I ordered some standard Orton indicator cones, and we reran the glaze kiln with indicator cones at each blowhole. I started the kiln early last Thursday, and was able to monitor it's progress. The upper element did heat up, but the lower element initially didn't heat up at all. When the electronic read-out said the kiln had reached 1200 degrees, then the lower element came on and heated up very rapidly, causing a couple pieces on the bottom shelf to pop when the kiln reached around 1350 degrees. I heard them go. The next day, when the student worker unloaded the kiln, the indicator cones were not deformed at all. The kiln had not even heated up to Cone 4. This is very disappointing for the students, who are eager to see their finished work. It would appear that the electronics in the kiln are malfunctioning - the temperature sensor appears to be very mis-calibrated, and the programing that is supposed to turn the different elements on and regulate how much current is run to each element is also not working correctly. My supervisor is making arrangement to have someone from Runyon Clay, where the kiln was purchased, come down and work on it. This kiln is at least 10 years old, and is apparently damaged in the move from the old studio to the new - it just got shook up, I guess. Always something. Spring break is next week for our little college, so I am having the students do mini-critiques for their midterm grade. They will present me with their two best pieces, and we will evaluate concept, technique and product for each piece. This will be fun for me, but stressful for the students, I suppose.

The First Bisque Firing in the new Studio!

Well, I've opened up the kiln, and this is what I see ....no apparent explosions, no nasty cracks, just a slew of nicely baked pots, now waiting to be finished with slips, glazes and student imagination, and then run through the glaze firing. Delightful!

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.