Sweet Ash.

Hello all, here is the post I promised yesterday. I've been busy getting pots ready for a wood firing taking place monday. I'm also firing the gas kiln at the univ. this week with a dinnerware set and a couple of platters, the rest of the kiln will be rounded out with student work. I've found myself making more pots for glaze as opposed to slip lately. I think I'm needing some variety. My last couple of semesters in college I exhausted myself with ash glazes, both pots and testing-I must've tested in the hundreds of glazes. I picked two that I liked and have used only those since college, funny enough one of the best glazes then and still now is one of the simplest and oldest, the old 442. You can see it a couple posts ago. So anyways, about half of the wood kiln load will be glazed. I'm a little worried, actually a lotta worried about how they'll turn out. I thought maybe I would just fire them in the gas kiln but to me that feels as if I'm doing the work an injustice by taking the easy/reliable way out. Sure I may lose more pieces but the surface on the pots out of the wood kiln just puts the gas kiln to shame. So why, you may ask, am I firing a dinnerware set in the gas kiln? I don't have enough kiln shelves to stack all those plates individually. Way it goes.


It's been a looooong time since I've glazed a platter. Actually that's not true-I did a shino platter last fall, anyways... I have had trouble finding large containers to be able to dip large platters/shallow bowls into. They either require too much volume of glaze(rubbermaid storage) or are cost prohibitive(restaurant suppliers). I saw a photo of Guillermo Cuellar somewhere glazing a platter in the lid of a trash can and I thought to myself: Brilliant!


Here are a couple slipped platters I decorated a few days ago. They are both tile6 slip-the one on the left has a contrasting slip brushed on one side and a brushwork pattern that is supposed to resemble birds, I don't know how successful that is but I like it all the same. I hakeme'd(can that be a verb?) the guy on the right after I poured on the slip. The hakeme pattern is korean via hamada via shimaoka via phil rogers, though maybe I'm the first to use a flashing slip, eh?

This bowl is about 12" across, I'm particularly fond of how well the jigsaw blade pattern came out.

Today has been one of those days that makes you want to pull your hair out, nothing really going wrong, just frustration after frustration. I was feeling a bit pissy and made a post unfairly critiquing someone who as far as I know is not here in the blog-o-sphere. I enjoy a healthy critique as much as the next fella but it's not fair when the person being critiqued can't defend themselves. So for those of you who read that before I deleted it- I apologize for my doucheness.
I was thinking this afternoon about potters who have reached a certain sort of tenure in the pottery world. It reminds me a bit of The Emperor's New Clothes, draw your own conclusions.

That's enough blither for today. So long.