Excavations from the Past

I love looking through old Ceramics Monthly magazines – even if they are decades old. Recently a former member of our guild donated some old ones to us and I have spent the winter months happily engrossed with images from the past. This photo of a jug by Sheila Casson from Sept 1993 caught my eye – very elegant and unusual. Not sure how it would pour - though with that long spout, probably very elegantly.

Jug by Sheila Casson - from Ceramics Monthly 1990's 

Individual Medalta creamer found in crawl space

When investigating a sink leak in the crawl space under the Potters' Guild, I found that our leaking plumbing had eroded some of the sandy soil and had exposed this little ceramic creamer. I remember the days before plastic creamers. It was always a little individual ceramic or metal jug of cream that was placed with your tea or coffee. The space where we have our Guild used to be a restaurant until about 1970 and so the creamer must have come from it – made in Medalta even!

So I decided to make some miniature ones –  little creamers but ala Sheila Casson - sort of. You throw a cylinder, cut away part of it in a semicircle and fold over the two ends.

My three small jugs ala Sheila Casson  - sort of.

Have Mug Will Travel

My husband and I always have a full travel mug of our favorite hot beverage when we set off in our car – milky tea for my husband and lately hibiscus tea with honey for me. Unfortunately I find that most travel mugs even if made of metal because of their plastic lids tend to impart their taste to the tea and I have long thought of making a ceramic one – but how to make a cover to stop the beverage from spilling? I do not like the look of the commercial plastic covers that you can buy as an accessory from ceramic suppliers - plus being plastic there is that plastic taste again.

When I was visiting a gallery in Banff a month ago, I was told about a potter who makes great travel mugs – located in Canmore a town near Banff. Unfortunately we were going in the opposite direction so did not get to visit, but the gallery salesperson brought up the website site ----- and they really did look great – especially clever idea for the cork lids and the little sippy holes.

Original design travel mugs by John and Katie Borrowman of the Cabbage and Kings Pottery
in Canmore Alberta.

A few days later we arrived at our son’s home in Kimberly, BC and in searching for some cups in his cupboard I saw that he had two of those travel mugs! I asked him how he liked them – well he did not use them as he never uses a travel mug. I never did get a chance to try them out in the car, but they handle well, though heavier naturally than the plastic or metal ones.

Great mugs -- so kudos to John and Katie Borrowman at http://www.ofcabbagesandkings.ca/

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - Carbon Trap Shino

It's been a great year - with lots of gas firings and three wood firings as well as my workshops at MISSA.  I have been really interested in the carbon trapping shinos and have been using Malcolm Davis's recipe. I was very sad to learn of his recent death. I have read the presentation that he made at NCECA last year and what a wonderful career he had! Someone who we can really admire. If you want to read it - here is the link:

http://www.nceca.net/static/documents/MalcolmDavis.pdf  It's too bad that the slides that he used in the presentation are not available as well.

So here are some pictures of my Malcolm Davis Shinos - with and without Red Art. The one with Red Art is used on porcelain - with no Red Art you do not seem to get the orange colours on porcelain.

The Good: MD Shino without Red Art - Dan Hill's lithium slip with cobalt was first sprayed and then wiped off the the trees. Then sprayed with MD Shino without Red Art. Then the trees were waxed. The carbon trapping at the edges of the tree trunks is really great. I've been trying to replicate but so far with no success! Fired to probably cone 12 - 13 in my June 2011 firing.

Since I use  both B-mix - a porcelaneous stoneware and B-Mix for Wood Fire ( I presume it has something added to aid flashing) I tried both MD Shino with and without Red Art as I was not sure which one to use. In the gas kiln there seemed to be little difference between the two types on the above clays. However in the wood kiln the MD without Red Art seemed to get very little orange colour and the one with, seemed to go rather dark, more brown than orange. Maybe the ashes are washing out some of the orange?  So not sure which MD Shino to use from now on.

The Good: DH lithium slip sprayed on right and bottom as well as rim of bottle. Sprayed with Wirtz Shino  and then poured on  MD Shino on right shoulder. You can see how the lithium slips tends to bubble through. Same firing as above - in fact pots were next to each other. There was great carbon trapping where the shino was thicker due to the poured layer on the shoulder. Unfortunately this pot cracked on the bottom seam.

The Good: Dark stoneware clay - one half poured with MD Shino with Red Art on left and the other half without Red Art. Waxed out design. Got great carbon trapping but no orange hues.

The Bad: Used again Dan Hill's lithium slip with cobalt and then sprayed with MD Shino without Red Art. Sprayed a light coat of MD with Red Art over the upper area of the trees and people. Appliqued areas then waxed. You can see that it went orange there, but the bottom part was totally white - totally oxidation I guess. My end of Oct firing. The colours are not bad - but not what I was looking for in a Shino.

The Ugly: MD Shino without Red Art - and without any lithium slip. Appliques were waxed out. Really ended up washed out. The ash deposit on the left removed what little orange blush that there was. I have to remember to take that into consideration when I load the kiln and make sure that the ash works with the design and not against it.

The Ugly: Lithium slip on top part and then wiped off the appliqued areas. Sprayed with MD Shino with Red Art - plate cracked but you can see that the orange on the left is not a vibrant colour. On the right there is quite a bit of ash deposit. Again the trees were waxed out, but no carbon trapping either.

Ending with a Whimper - 5th Firing Oct 2011

I was keeping my fingers crossed that the warm weather would hold until I could do another firing at the end of Oct. It did but the day ended up extremely windy and with all the leaves off the trees the kiln was exposed to the full brunt of the wind whipping through the valley. Maybe that was part of the problem as I could not get that typical chug chug sound from the primary air inlets, instead the flames would come out every time an extra strong gust of wind would blow, but no sound. It was like the wind would blow down through the chimney and out the primary air holes, reversing the normal flow. I have always associated the chugging with reduction. Whatever the reason the results were a real blow to my esteem - no reduction at all,  no chuns, barely any celadons and no carbon trapping - the shinos with the character of a white fish belly. I had also decided not to load the last section - felt that it might help in bringing up the temperature in the middle. 

Last section shelving sloping down to the flue to try and direct the flame lower  in the earlier sections as I find that the top is always a lot hotter and has a lot more ash.

Tall shino pots loaded in the middle section. I did another pot with the tethered dove theme. I love making large bottle forms but they do not sell very well.

The chuns blue (Jun 4 over Temmoku) ended up just a shiny brown, the butternut bowls grey, the ones on the left a grey transparent that should have had a hint of blue green and the ones on the right were supposed to be a darker celadon blue-green.

The bottom front section - the two small bottles on the left were the only ones with some nice orange flashing, but that was probably due to the fact that I brushed them with ash water and soda water first. All the shinos were mostly just a pale beige.

Anyway blocking the last section and trying to get the flames lower did not work - the bases of my tall pieces were all unfired compared to the tops. The tail end of the kiln was colder than normal compared to the front - again leaving out the pots in that section did not seem to help either. Anyway I will have all winter to try and figure out what I did wrong and to gear up enough energy to repeat the firings again in the spring.

Fourth Firing - Heat and Humidity - Sept 2011

We had been spending a lot of time on our farm, making trails for the woodlot tour in October to see our butternut grove. Butternuts  in North Anerica are all dying from a canker and so have been put on the endangered speices list. The search is on for a canker resistant tree - so far over 8000 trees over a wide geographic area have been examined by researchers and maybe only 4 are showing sign of recovery. These may then become the parents of future resistant trees if the trait proves to be genetic and can be passed on to future generations.

As a result of all the trail clearing I got a lot of white pine branches cut into firewood for my wood kiln. In addition I bought a truckload of cedar slabs in June hoping that they would dry a lot faster than any cedar cut this year.

Wood storage - cedar slabs on the left

Malcolm Davis Shinos ready to go into the wood fire - the large plate dunted in the firing - seems like it was on the way up as the glaze had run down the broken edges a bit. I think that I preheated too hot the night before and then let it cool before starting again the next morning.

I managed to get this firing in before the end of summer which has been very hot and humid. With all the humidity the shino glazes did not want to do their thing - that is getting that crusty white soda ash look from the soda ash migrating to the surface. To speed up the drying process I had heat-gunned the interior of my tall slab vases and then blocked the tops with plastic bags, thinking this would force the soda to the outside surface. This did not seem to work as little soda ash ended up on the outside surface, much less than normally. Thinking back, heating the interior would really have wicked the soda ash to the inside surface, even if the tops were blocked and the interior could not dry quickly. It would have been better to sweep the heat gun on the outside surface. The test that I had done at MISSA two years ago when I had placed the shinos in different situations - what worked the best was to place the pot in a sunny and windy location and you got great crusting patterns.

Below shows a test to see how ashes affect the cones - both are cone 10 - one was capped by the pot and the other was outside it. It seems like they were equal which is good to know, but maybe the outside cone was not subjected to too much ash where it was placed. I will have to repeat the test in the very front where there is a lot of ash.

I got some great chuns - on the left Jun 4 over Temmoku turned out a vivid blue/purple and in the front section some super carbon trapping - totally black except where for wax resist brush marks. This was MD shino without the Red Art and it results in more white instead of orange over porcelain. Unfortunately the tall vases ended up mostly an ugly shade of orange brown. I will have to try and refire them in the gas kiln. I am having trouble understanding why one pot gets it while another one next to it hardly any at all.
This time some of the carbon trapping also ended up as even speckling - rather like granular managnese, even where there was applique or lacquer resist/carving that was waxed out. I guess that is what makes shinos so exciting!

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Third Firing of the Newfoundout Kiln - June 2011

The end of June firing was great - it was very hot and sunny with no wind. It was the first time that I was able to use a lot of pine, mostly white pine branches and I side stoked with 1x 2 lumber strips that my husband no longer wanted. The temperature reached cone 9 at the chimney end, but I think I really overshot at the front end as cone 11 ended up in a puddle, though with wood firing you can never be sure how much the ashes are affecting the cones. The colour in the kiln near the end at times was white, white, white - I have never seen it that bright so it may have reached cone 13. In addition many glazes turned a shiny transparent, like a celadon. 

Wood Fire BMix - Watercolour Green brushed on and rubbed off, then glazed with Stony Yellow, Hannah Blue and Ochre Ash glazes. You can see the copper from the Watercolour Green was reduced to red - maybe the blood part of the blood sweat and tears that those early settlers when through in the Newfoundout.

The pots pictured are glazed the same, except one is Bmix woodfire clay and the other out of Smoothstone - a stoneware clay -  and fired in a gas kiln to cone 10.

Stoneware clay with the same glazes as above but fired in the gas kiln.

Every time we drive up the kilometer long steep hill into the Newfoundout - that high valley where our farm is located, I think of how those first settlers in the 1880's must have struggled up that hill to claim their land holdings. I wonder what were their first thoughts when they finally arrived - disappointed, happy, apprehensive? By the 1950's they sure must have been disappointed - as the whole valley, the Newfoundout - where at one time 16 families lived was abandoned. I am trying to do a series of pots that reflect some of that.