Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Early Birthday Present To Me

I ordered this a while ago and it arrived at Ceramics Canada yesterday. It is a gas conversion kit that will turn a 10cu.ft electric kiln body into a propane fired kiln with the goal of firing it in either a soda or salt atmosphere. I'm guessing soda will be the end choice as salt pretty much melts soft fire brick, but I might opt to prepare the bricks with a refractory coating like ITC 100 and that should effectively prevent salt eating away the bricks.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

What was old is new again

I used to make fancy teapots. This was back when the studio had a 40 cu.ft. gas kiln where size was not as much of an issue as firing in a 10 cu.ft. electric kiln. When we moved studios and changed how we fire, I stopped making these whimsical pots. Now I am booked for a 10 day atmospheric firing workshop at Medalta in July and that was the perfect opportunity for me to bust out the ^10 clay and make these forms again. I am, hopefully, a better potter than I was 8 years ago and I have been far enough removed from the form for a while now that it is almost new for me and I hope I am making better decisions regarding the assembly and perhaps not as constrained by what I thought I knew, or what I thought was "the right way" to do things. So there may be a lot more whimsy to come...