DT-MSH/TC Klein Bottle revisited

Longtime follower(s) of this blog might recall the DT-MSH/TC that I made in 2010; it waited patiently until 2011 to be fired, emerging from the Cedar Creek wood kiln covered with strange bubbly crusty purple stuff. Thereafter, it sat high up on a shelf in my study, hidden behind a bunch of other pots: too much work to throw away, but too ugly to look at. And then, last month, neighbor-potter Julie Jones said she had a little space left in her ^10 wood kiln and asked if I had anything I wanted her to fire for me.

Behold: no more bubbly crusty purple stuff! Thanks, Julie!

Jamie Kirkpatrick workshop

Several years ago, I took two classes taught by Jamie Kirkpatrick at Claymakers: one on making larger pots and one on saggar firing. If I nudge my students now with the cheer, "you are the boss of the clay," it was in Jamie's classes that I started to be the boss of my own clay. So I was delighted that Jamie came back to Claymakers in early June to teach a saggar-firing workshop. The workshop (along with a workshop with Deborah Schwarzkopf last year) was a good reminder that, yes, you can make pretty much anything you want out of clay--you just have to figure out how. Jamie's pots are gorgeous, the cohort of students was a pleasure to spend a week with, and the results of the firing were dramatic and beautiful.

C.E.'s secret code soaked up the smoke

My best result: copper wire mask with oxidation spot from hole in saggar

Zigzag pot with oxidation spot from saggar hole (red slip on white clay)

Totally reduced chickens and nested spheroid with one of Jamie's pots to the right and K.S.F.'s pots to the left

Jamie pot with swirl

Heavy metal stripes on a Jamie pot

Jamie's carved pot

Fresh fern oxidation shadow on a pot by K.S.F.

S.S. dipped hexagon netting into copper wash and got this fascinating result

Big Fish

One of the lessons I learned through my Penland experience last summer was to take advantage of the clay workshops offered closer to home--cheaper, faster, and easier to access (albeit not as scenic, and without the great food). I've taken three excellent workshops at Claymakers since then: one with Susan Feagin on screen printing and slip transfer, one with Kent McLaughlin on hand-making brushes (lovely brushes with bamboo handles and--oy--bristles cut from sanitized, neon-dyed deer tails from tackle shops; no matter how well cleaned or fluorescently colored, deer tails still feel and smell like deer tails and probably would have benefited the deer more than me); and one this past weekend with Alan Bennett on sculpting and raku-firing fish.

In about 30 hours, Alan took us from wet clammy clay to finished fired fish. We sculpted fish Saturday morning into early afternoon, encouraged them to dry in front of fans while Alan demoed glazing, and then gutted the fish from behind to thin their walls. They went directly into the electric kilns to dry, were bisque fired overnight, and remarkably came out mostly whole the next morning. We glazed and raku-fired Sunday afternoon, and everyone left with finished work by early evening. My main take-aways: how to make eyeballs and eyelids; how to sculpt a fish in under two hours; how to gut a solid form; and the knowledge that fish have eyelids, nostrils, lips, and ears. (As my friend N commented, "imagine that--it's like they have entire FACES!"; yet even with a tank full of fish at home, I'd never looked closely enough to notice anything but the lips. I now notice their nostrils, but remain unconvinced that they have eyelids.)

One of my fish--the last one I made, so the wettest on Saturday evening--cracked widthwise, from the dorsal fin through the tail and into the belly. He became my glaze test tile. I think the colors look a little too paint-by-numbers-ish, although friends in the workshop pulled out photographs of fish that have similarly discrete color transitions.

Fish two was a quick expendable extra--a whistle, to see how whistles make it through raku. The unglazed portions of clay blackened as the piece cooled outside the kiln in sawdust (when the sawdust burns, it creates a reduction atmosphere around the clay). The eyeball whites and the fangs, made from porcelain, were brushed with a solution of gerstley borate to keep them from blackening.

I saved the largest fish for last. It was the first one I made on Saturday and consequently had enough time to dry prior to bisquing that it didn't crack. I worked harder at blending the colors on this guy. It's hard to see in the photo, but there's a lovely fluid transition on the body from red to yellow to vaguely green, with no crackle on the spots and lots of crackle on the belly. The head merges from blue at the nose to greenish with hints of red and yellow at the gills.

Post-firing debriefing

As always, I need time to come to terms with my pots post-firing. For example, what I considered yesterday to be disturbing crusty bubbly purple stuff, I now consider (just one good night's sleep later) merely befuddling crusty bubbly purple stuff. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Good news first:

The Moebius Diatom Boxes experienced minimal warpage, and none of the parts stuck together. The photos make them look toastier and bagelier than they are in reality. I expect future MDBs will end up electric or gas fired, maybe with some stains for color, to reduce preparatory exasperation.

My four favorite pieces are square boxes (wheel thrown and altered!) that I glazed top to bottom. They responded beautifully to the soda. The tallest box is about 5" high.

There are two fine pitchers, an excellent bottle, some lush double-walled bowls, a confident teapot, and a juicy green pear (looking artificially green in the photo; it's a little bluer in real life). I consider it a bonus that only one of the pitchers seeps, because--like every other pot I've produced in the past two years that has seeped--they're both made from Loafer's Glory clay. No more Loafer's Glory clay for me (regrettably; it's a lovely clay to work with when it's wet). I have a can of very dangerous highly toxic spray that's supposed to help seal pots, unless the can explodes or the spray poisons you in the process; I haven't tried it out yet, however, because I value functioning lungs, skin, and eyeballs more than I value my seeping pots, but maybe this spring I'll get out the goggles, gloves, and respirator and give it a whirl.


Here are some chickens mugging for the camera:

I will concede that the bubbly crusty purple stuff looks pretty good on chickens. Here's a close up of the crusty stuff on some cups, where it's less appealing (dry crusty stuff and lips don't go well together):

Upon pieces that are strictly objets d'art, the purple stuff is fine. The objet on the left is actually a vase form on its side, though I very much like the spherical look in the photo. I was planning to give up holes for a while, but I think I'm going to have to try making some hole-filled spheres.

On the Double Torus-Multiple Size Hole/Total Coverage Klein Bottle that's been patiently waiting to be fired since last summer, the purple is a little garish against the green glaze. What am I saying, the [w]hole thing is garish anyway:



I will try sanding the crusty bubbles off of pots that should be functional, such as this bowl and colander, as no one wants little bits of heavy-metal-laden glass to chip off into their noodles:

Also in the category of Pots-That-Have-Been-Waiting-Since-Last-Summer are several wheel thrown and altered oval boxes. Alas, instead of using my purple alumina hydrate wax on the lids, I wadded the lids--with the somewhat predictable result that most of the lids warped. Dang. From here on out, it's alumina hydrate wax for me.

In the Total Fail category are several pieces made from a highly recommended ^5-^8 porcelain that I purchased online. I'm used to porcelain being finicky and S-cracking in the bottoms of bowls and cups, but these pieces split in some very odd places. Several tumblers had vertical cracks down the side, often beginning well below the rim and ending well above the foot. In the photo below of the two tumblers, a long vertical crack cuts through the cup on the left, while some beads of water are leaking through a crack in the cup on the right. The salt-rock pear has a horizontal crack across the top that is, as far as I can tell, completely unrelated to the form. Homer Cat doesn't mind the cracks in the tumblers, since all he sees are People Cups, but these pieces are headed for the trash can. I bisqued all of my porcelain pots well before the outside temperatures dropped below freezing, so I'm at a loss to explain the defects. Schade.

To end on a more positive note, here are some non-crusty, lid-fitting oval jars (does that count as litotes?), and a picture of a flattery* penguin chatting it up with a chicken at an office party (penguin and penguin photo by Bob F.).

*as in, "imitation is the sincerest form of..."

Unloading

We unloaded the kiln today. Serene Wadding Buddha got a hefty dusting of black soot plus some disturbingly green mystery powder, yet still he sits contentedly on his mat with his wee bird companion and cup of tea (which is not 3/4 full of unmelted glaze). Nothing fazes him.

Here are photos of the front and back stack:

What's that, you say? It looks like something is amiss with the far end of the bag wall*? Why, you're right! It collapsed during the firing. Fortunately, it slumped sideways into the kiln wall rather than tumbling onto the loaded shelves. Casualties included just two bowls, a cup, and a chicken, none of which fell from the wall. Thanks, Serene Wadding Buddha (and to you too, Chipper Dog, of whom I have no post-firing photo)!


The pots were a little dry this time, with a bubbly purple crustiness I've never seen before. If you are less uptight than I am, or if crusty bubbly purple stuff is your thing, or if you are able to squint in just the right way, or if you are one of fifty or so clay chickens, you might be able to find such random and non-replicable surface treatments not entirely displeasing.** I'm working on it. Cedar Creek potter T.T. wondered whether the kiln might have been fuming copper or tin left over from a previous firing ("A.B. sometimes puts pretty wacky stuff in the kiln..."). Indeed, Serene Wadding Buddha's dusting of green looks suspiciously like copper carbonate. Fortunately, a few glazed gems are mixed in with the crustiness. I'll post some photos soon.

*I don't know why a kiln's bag wall is called a bag wall--OED, how could you fail me so?--other than that the bag wall protects the pots by creating a bag of air between the pots and the burning fuel. OED does offer a definition for bag from 18th-century coal-mining lingo that seems to make sense here--"a cavity filled with gas or water."

**I recently learned from a friend that the rhetorical term for these backhanded compliments is litotes.

Sneak peek

I went over to Cedar Creek and took photos through the peeps. No puddles of melted clay, no sand-papery unmelted glaze: I shall sleep well tonight.

It's hard to see in the first photo, but I can tell you that the chicken sure has some fine ash on her...

Cone 6 Wood Firing

This weekend, a group of friends and I loaded and fired the wood kiln at Cedar Creek. For past firings, we've fired to ~cone 9 (^9, ~2300°F). This time, we decided for several reasons to fire to ^6 (~2240°F). First, wood firing is strenuous work: we stoke the kiln and stir the coals pretty steadily for several hours. Past firings have generally taken 12-17 hours, with the kiln typically stalling out around ^7 or 8. We figured it should be relatively easy and significantly faster to make it to ^6. Second, the lower we fire, the less fuel we use. Burning old pine pallets is one way to recycle, but it isn't exactly environmentally friendly. We hoped that skipping the long stall before ^9 would make a positive dent in the total amount of wood needed. Finally, this past year, Claymakers shifted their reduction firing option from ^9 to ^6. Thus many of the folks in our wood firing group were already using ^6 clay bodies and had easy access to reliable ^6 reduction glazes.

Wood firing is thrilling, but it brings out assorted anxieties in me because, well, I'm generally an anxious person.

Pre-firing organizational anxiety. Is everyone making pots? Will we have too few pots to fill the kiln? Too many pots? Too few? Too many? Waffle waffle, nudge nudge.

Glazing anxiety. So much blank bisqueware, so many decorative decisions. I thank my glazing support group, Rob & Di, for putting up with my anxious chatter during our glazing fest on Friday.

Packing anxiety. All participants are gathered around the kiln, with all pots wadded: do we have too many pots? Too few? Too many short pots, not enough tall? Too many wide pots, not enough narrow? How will we get all those pots into the kiln?

Despite the anxieties, there are few projects I enjoy more than wood firing. We wadded pots Saturday morning (thanks, Charlie, Blanka, Jo, Jessie, & Bob, for the extra wadding help!), and started loading around noon. There's something pleasurably artful about packing a kiln efficiently, fitting all the puzzle pieces together neatly. That pleasure, combined with a dose of packing anxiety, leads to a tendency to pack the back of the kiln tightly (when we're concerned about fitting everything in efficiently) and to pack the front loosely (when we start running out of pots because we packed the back so beautifully). I think we found a good balance this time.

Despite early projections, it turned out we had room to spare. We were short on tall pots, so we had to leave some gaps toward the top of the kiln. Still, it was the most elegantly loaded kiln I've ever had the pleasure of sharing, with a lovely assortment of pots. Two wadding kiln gods went into the kiln for good luck (thanks, Charlie & Di!). Serene Wadding Buddha and Chipper Dog remind me to chill.

We fired on Sunday. Rob and Blanka started the kiln at 7am. By 1pm, we still had some 1200 degrees left to go. Stoke, stir, stoke, stir. A smaller amount of clay requires less time to heat than a larger amount of clay, and we had twice as many pots on the bottom of the kiln as on the top, so we had a hard time heating the bottom of the kiln. The back stack also heated more slowly than the front. Consequently, as the pyrometric cones at the front middle and top of the kiln started arriving at ^6 and ^7, the ^5 cones at the bottom and back of the kiln remained stalwartly upright.

Had we been firing to ^9, we could have plowed right through that unevenness. Instead, just as we would have with a ^9 firing, we spent the final couple of firing hours trying to even out the temperature throughout the kiln, attempting to hold the top of the kiln at ^6 while heating the bottom and back. Thus Zeno's dichotomy paradox applies during firings! (If Zeno wants to buy a peach, he knows that he can't just walk to the farmer's market: he needs to walk a block further than the farmer's market and stop at the peach stand en route. Silly us, we though we could get away with just walking to the farmer's market.)

Eventually, we got the cool parts of the kiln up to a passable ^5-^6, with the middle and top of the kiln at ^7, and we sprayed in the soda ash. Because soda acts as a flux, it makes the pyrometric cones melt more; by the time we were done spraying (~8pm), all of the ^7 cones were totally obliterated.

The last anxiety mode is until-we-unload anxiety, which I didn't realize was on my list until I started dreaming last night:

Some of us (I'm not sure who) sneak over to Cedar Creek to open the kiln--too soon, too soon!--in the pale pink-blue-gold-gray light of early dawn. Other faceless people--strangers--are present on the roof, but we don't want them to see us because we're not really supposed to be there before the gallery opens (liability concerns), plus they'll see us opening the kiln too soon. They don't appear interested in us, however, because they are busy watching the festive fireworks going off over the distant horizon. In a rustic barn, where we bring the surreptitiously unloaded pots (we know we may look at the pots in the kiln, but we aren't supposed to move them until the whole group is gathered on Thursday; but it's always so hard to resist!), we see that everything is underfired; somehow, even the pots that are overfired are underfired. The sand-papery glazed surfaces have rectangular bits of some unmelted glaze chemical all over them. I forget to check how the slipped surfaces have fared because I am so distracted by the glaze defects. Apparently we also forgot to empty some of the pots when we put in the liner glazes: some of the cups are 3/4 full of unmelted glaze. We can tell, looking down at the pots from our vantage point near the kiln roof (we don't want to climb all the way up onto the roof, lest the fireworks-gazers get suspicious), that the whole load is like that, but because of the cups full of glaze, refiring isn't an option, even though we know no one else will be using the kiln this coming weekend. I am foggily aware that there are a logical inconsistencies in all of this, which causes me to wake up.

I might just have to go pull a peep brick on Tuesday to make sure everything looks OK. We unload the kiln on Thursday.