Thursday, October 29, 2009

wood firing results


Last night, I drove back over to Gary's for the unloading of the wood-fired kiln. It was very exciting to see each piece as it was unloaded. There were some lovely pieces - nicer that just what c0mes out of a regular gas kiln firing. We had added little dishes of salt, which produces interesting effects. And the smoke from the wood also reacts with the glazes. I put in a mask, which came out a nice brown. Next time, I will use more than one color of glaze. I had put in two other pieces, but I made a mistake there. They were made from low-fire clay and this was a very high firing. The clay melted! It was weird. Luckily, they did not damage anyone else's pieces. I did know better than to do that, but forgot that those were low-fire pieces. You can bet I won't forget that again. The pieces weren't anything I cared about, but I would have like to see what the glazes looked like.


Parking at Gary's is rather difficult. I ended up trying to back out along the road, which has a creek on one side and a hill on the other. No fences or guard rails, of course. And no lights either. I could hardly see the driveway and was trying very hard not to end up in the creek!! One of the guys finally came out and guided me, so that I could turn the car around. I really wasn't eager to back all the way out.


2 comments:

Pat said...

The mask looks good!

Deb D said...

nice mask - didn't realize that firing was so high temperature, thanks