Some Ideas on Helping These Survive...

Before you ask why on earth I made these, considering my last tests with this black clay were so dreadful, well, these were thrown and trimmed long before I fired those initial tests. But I’ve got some ideas on how to get these through the kilns successfully. It seems that enclosed sections—whether it’s the space within a lidded form (a body with a lid on top) or the cavity within a foot-ring cause the glaze to fire rough and scratchy, presumably because the gases can’t escape from the glaze and the manganese decomposing in the clay. So for these, they’ll be placed in the lowest-temperature spots in the kiln, and I’ll raise them up on props. I’m going to create a kind of channel in those props so the gas inside the foot can escape, or I’ll simply fire them on wadding, a clay-like mixture I make from 50% kaolin and 50% coarse alumina hydrate and stick, like tiny feet, into the foot, raising it up. Whilst I don’t think lidded forms will work with this particular black clay, I believe these should be fine, provided I don’t overfire them. #clay #stoneware #studiopottery #pottery #tableware #ceramics