December 3rd Firing

With pottery, all pieces must go through the "final trial by fire". Weeks, sometimes months, of work on the wheel - throwing, trimming and altering - can be undone in the course of a few hours if the firing goes wrong.

This firing started out poorly because after keeping the gas on low over night, I discovered the next morning that one of the cone packs had popped some shards down into the pots below where they would have melted into the glaze. I stopped the firing, waited a day to open and clean out the shards and gave it another try two days later.

Here are some of the pots from that firing. I went heavy on the Antique Green glaze, a favorite of mine, because it breaks so nicely over texture. I also mixed up two new green glazes which turned out hideously. I'm going to try applying them differently during the next firing but if they are still yucky, they are going to get pitched.

I uploaded more photos from this firing to my Flickr account; a link is above.