Salt Soda and Wood - A Success! Part I

Well the show that I was participating in closed near the end of August - and by all reports was a great success - we even sold lots of pots! We (Tim Storey - salt, Dan Hill - soda and me - wood) have kilns all within half an hour of each other and work independently. This time, although we would use our own kilns, we would also put a few pieces in each others' kilns which was exciting and so we had a few representative pieces fired three different ways. As there were three different potters, three different styles and three different methods of firing there was always something for visitors to like!
(I have to apologize for the pictures - they are not the best - I always am too impatient when taking pictures.)

Below are pictures of Tim's meticulously crafted and very expressive wall birds for which he is justly famous - all roasted 3 different ways. Yum! Tim uses a mixture of metal oxides to colour his creations and in the wood the colours, especially the black on the birds ended more washed out, resulting in more brown and orange tones than in the salt.

In the soda, his bird ended up with turquoise blue colours around the head - we were not sure, but it possibly came from copper fuming . The best wood results I thought were on one of his mortar and pestle sets of which I unfortunately do not have a picture, but there were bright yellow and green flashs as well as the brown and blacks.

Tim Storey's Bird - salt fired

Soda fired

 and wood fired

Tim Storey's Gravy Boats - salt

Tim's regal ocean liner with 3 of his teapots and gravy boats - all salt

Tim's fish and snail teapots - salt.

I really liked his "gravy boats" - went great with his nautical theme of boat teapots. His stately ocean liner boldly held center stage. His reputation for attention to detail - needless to say - is well deserved! His seams are incredibly smooth and he incises a line all around the bottom of his pots, about an 1/4 inch fron the edge and it really makes for a nice surprise when you look at the bottom and also gives it a fine finished look that often handbuilt pots lack. Tim only does handbuilding - he's definitely a master handbuilder - no wheel for him!
For those that live in eastern Ontario and wish to see more of Tim's work he will be part of the Madawaska Valley Studio Tour on Sept 28 and 29.
To be continued.

Ottawa River Pot - Black Sand and River Clay

The Ottawa River beaches around Deep River are striped by bands of black sand. Our children used to have great fun picking up the sand with magnets as the black colour is due to iron minerals.

small magnet picking out the black sand

Having seen Navajo sand paintings in the American Southwest this winter I decided to develop my own version of a sand painting. Instead of using glue as the Navajos do to attach the sand I use glaze. The black iron particles melt into the glaze creating a black pattern.

First I concentrate the black sand by picking and repicking the sand a few times with a magnet. Then to be able to paint with the sand I need a suspending agent - I could use wax but that will repel the glaze. I cooked up some flour, water and sodium silicate to a consistency to thick cream. The sodium is so that once the pots are bisqued, the sand will not readily fall off when handling or glazing. I find that using just a thin MD shino  with a top spray of soda ash gives me a nice orange colour that contrasts well with the black sand. I also tried stencils as the Navajo do but as I do not like using commercial ones, I need to make my own and that is very time consuming. So I mostly use brush decorations.

Mugs, tray and teabag rest with black sand brush decoration and shino/soda ash glaze. I also tried using stencils as for the fish.

For the mugs I glazed the inside again with a local material - clay found in the Ottawa River in Deep River. Although we are surrounded by sand - Deep River is built on sand dunes left from 10,000 years ago when the glaciers retreated and we were then on the edge of the Champlain Sea,- and our sand beaches rival any of those found in famous resorts, in a few places if you dig down in the river's edge there are layers of clay. When fired it gives a nice glossy brown. So that is the Ottawa pot and I sell them with an explanation about the sand and glaze - which helps them to fly off the shelves!.

Seventh Firing of the Train - The Wreck Continues

I'm trying to catch with my blogs - just too much to do in the summer!
The early July firing was my last chance to fire things before the Salt, Soda and Wood show that I am taking part in from mid July to end of August. In the front section top and bottom it was a repeat of the last train disaster - the 6th firing at the beginning of June. So it was not the hard bricks and under firing, it was not the fault of letting the pots with MD shino sit around in the damp and fog - it was something that was happening in the first part of the flame path where there is the most ash, flame and unburnt gases.

Also none of the blistered pots didn't remelt when I had put them into the gas kiln for another cone 10 firing. Even if reglazed with another glaze the bubbles and blisters stayed - so obviously the MD shino had the flux -  probably the soda - vaporize and so the bubbles could not smooth out.
So not sure what is making all the soda vaporize. Again this wood was mostly soft wood - white and red pine that has a lot of resin and probably somewhat damp for some pieces. Also all had bark on it.

Another possibility  - perhaps reduction cooling? Would the gases cause bubbles? In both firings I did not let the embers burn down that much before clamming up as in previous firings - both times due to just being too tired.

Still in the previous 5 firings any shinos in this front section were fantastic - in fact my favorite place for shinos. So I am pretty leery of doing another firing - will have to get other glazes for the front section.
It was a good thing that I had saved pots from last year for the show otherwise I would not have had many pots to put in.

The middle section was not bad, the white salt was pretty good. The tail end - still had some unmelted ash on the pots which when put in the gas kiln did smoothed out.

Combustion and Creativity - Salt Soda and Wood

Well I can relax now that I have delivered all my pots for a show that I am taking part in with two other potters called "Combustion and Creativity - Salt Soda and Wood". The wood part is me. The salt part is Tim Storey who does amazing things with hand building - his creations - many with animal themes in his unique style are widely collected.  http://www.madawaskastudiotour.com/studios2010/storey/storey.html    
The soda part is Dan Hill who does great things in cone 6 soda.
 http://www.hillpottery.com/DanHill/index.html
He also give workshops in soda firing using not only his large soda kiln but also a converted electric to soda kiln. So if you are in Barry's Bay, Ontario, sometime between July 20 and Aug 26 be sure to stop by South of 60 (railway station) and see the exhibit.
(Not sure why I am getting white sections in the write up - I can't seem to remove them even if I start over in a new blog section.)

Another Step Up the Mountain - But Where is the Peak?

More from those old Ceramics Monthlies. The Feb 1994 issue had a super article by Steven Hill titled "Don't Put the Flames Out" where he talks about his inspirations and how important it is to continue to develop your work over a lifetime no matter how great your pots are - otherwise they will lose their vitality. Steven finished the article with, "A favourite analogy of mine is of a mountain climber slowly making his way up toward the peak, dreaming of the summit. I hope to never reach that peak, because from that point on, it's a long downhill slide".  My father who was Austrian instilled in me a love of mountains so Steven's analogy about making pots and mountains really hit home.

I've been thinking about Steven's quote for some time now - I seem at times to have lost the path to the peak as I tend to wander around a lot. Sometimes I think I am going downwards as I revisit past work but I think I eventually get back on the path - but the path is hard to see as my work seems to evolve in multiple directions and not always with success. However I think the important part is to always keep on trying.

It's a bit hard to see but on left - bottom corners paddled up a bit  Right - bottom corners left flat

I used to make all my slab vases had a flat bottoms. When I started making smaller ones, I would paddle the bottom and the side - with rounding up the sides a bit - giving the pots a lift - having picked that up in Vince Pitelka's workshop at MISSA in 2011. Now I started doing that on all my large slab vases as well and what a difference it seems to make  - more life, elegance, lightness etc...etc. Now it seems obvious yet it took a few years to work out and develop. Another small step up the mountain.

I think as well it is very important to get impartial knowledgeable feedback - so I like to conclude that analogy with this - like many mountaineers on the really big peaks - you can't do it alone. Fusion - the Ontario Clay and Glass Association is offering their second mentoring program and hopefully I will get accepted as I find that I really miss and need that help up the mountain.

Train Wreck - Sixth Firing of the Newfoundout Train

What a train wreck - and unfortunately there were few survivors! I had replaced the front 1/3 of the inner layer of insulating bricks with hard brick, hoping that this would even out the temperatures in the stacking chamber. Instead what I got was a wreck  - the front half of the kiln under fired and the tail end totally over fired. Cone 10 was down in the front section but cones are rather unreliable in my kiln where the flames are so unidirectional. In the tail end cone 11 ended up in a puddle.

The front section apart from a few pieces were loaded with MD shino and Wirtz shino as liner. The pots ended up blistered bubbled and cratered - both outside as well as inside!

MD Shino - super crusty disaster - top shelf front section

So what happened?

1. Did the flames over fire the shinos and cause the blistering? I didn't think that shinos could over fire - they seem to be able to take a lot of heat - plus some of the liner glazes were underfired in that section - indicating not over-firing.

2. Was everything under fired and so the glaze did not have time to smooth out? I did not think that shinos do much bubbling during melting - but I could be wrong as they definitely bubble over other glazes. But on some pots the side away from the flames had some smooth melted surfaces. I would assume that the side away from the flames would remain cooler.

3. This was the first time that I had used some calcined kaolin and ball clay to replace some of the clay so as to reduce crawling. Did that affect the glaze? Did I mix up the glaze wrong? I used the same glaze on other pots in the middle section and the shino there was good though still a bit underfired in parts so that was not the cause.

4. Did I over reduce? - I was trying for lots of carbon trapping - so threw in everything at the start to build up soot - lots of pine boughs with needles on them as well as lots of little twigs on top of the logs.

5. Did reduction cooling occur? - not sure what happens with shino in reduction cooling, but there was some reduction cooling I think as the ember pile was still huge when I clammed up the kiln.

The carbon trapped bowl on bottom right was glazed just the day before firing. The rest up to a week before and loaded about a week to 3 days before. All the same glaze - MD shino - except for one white liner that was a bit underfired.

6. The front section pots were placed in the kiln anywhere from 5 to 3 days prior to the firing and there was rain during that time. The pots were protected from the rain as the kiln is under a shed roof - however it is located high in the Opeongo mountains where we often drive up into the fog. The few sides of pots that were away from the flames were smooth and these would have been protected from the prevailing winds (moisture) as well. I think that the pots reabsorbed moisture from the moist air and the glaze blistered up very slightly - not enough to be readily visible - as I had repositioned some of those pots just prior to firing and I would have noticed that something was wrong with the glaze.
Something like this happened once before with a MD shino pot that I had left out in the open - it was very foggy overnight and the next day the raw glaze had bubbled up. I fired it but the bubbles did not smooth out and these pots reminded me of that same effect.

Tray in top layer for front section - MD shino - all bubbled .

Small smooth sections on two bowls - sections were facing away from the flames.

As well I had added more shino glaze on the outside of two pots (see above) just prior to firing and the side away from the flame was again smooth. This would have countered any blistering that could have happened due to rain/fog moisture reabsorption.

One of the survivors - a rock wall vase - but still in critical condition. The middle section with this pot in it was loaded just the day of the firing and no blistering occurred, though some of the rocks which bubbled were in the front section and thy were glazed at the same time.

So I think I will have to take out the hard brick and put back the insulating bricks and make sure that I load the shinos just prior to firing.
Pots I can make more - but the stack of dry wood was diminished and that is harder and less fun to replace.