I make functional pots — mugs, bowls, jugs, the occasional
lidded jar that takes three attempts. One wheel, one electric kiln, a shed
that is too cold in February.
This page is not a shop. It's where I keep notes, mostly so
that I stop making the same mistakes twice. I do, still, but at least now
there's a record of it.
Kiln log
28 AugustCone 6 · oxidation14 mugs, 4 soup bowls
Good firing, one loss. The celadon went thin on the rims again — that's
three times now, so it isn't the glaze, it's how I'm holding the pot when
I dip. Next time: two hands, slower out.
21 AugustBisqueEverything from the July throwing
Slow ramp to 600 because two of the jugs had thick bases and I didn't
trust them. Nothing cracked. Worth the extra four hours.
2 AugustCone 6 · oxidationTest tiles only
Twenty-eight tiles, four base glazes, seven colourants. Most of it was
unremarkable. Two were not, and they're written up below.
17 JulyCone 6 · oxidation9 bowls, 2 jugs
Lost both jugs to the same thing — handles pulled too dry, cracked at
the lower join in the glaze firing. Attach them wetter. Everyone says this.
3 JulyBisqueMixed
Uneventful, which is the point of a bisque.
Glazes I keep coming back to
A pale celadon
Blue-green where it pools, nearly clear where it doesn't, so it makes
any carved line look deliberate. Unforgiving about thickness — thin on a
rim and it simply isn't there.
A satin white
The one I use when the form is the point. Slightly warm, not chalky,
and it doesn't crawl. The most boring glaze in the workshop and the one I
mix most often.
A tenmoku-ish brown
Breaks rust-orange over an edge and goes almost black where it's thick.
Looks best on a shape with somewhere for it to run to. Looks like mud on a
straight-sided mug, which I found out the slow way.
The accident from the August tiles
Satin white over the brown, both thin. Came out the colour of wet
sand with darker flecks. I have no idea yet whether it repeats. Twelve
more tiles are drying to find out.
Things that took me too long to learn
Centring is not a strength problem. Every time I've tried to force it,
the pot has been off by the time I opened it.
Weigh the clay. Six mugs from six balls of the same weight look like a
set. Six mugs thrown by eye look like six mugs.
Dry slowly and dry evenly. Most of what I've lost, I lost in the week
when I wasn't looking at it, not in the kiln.
Write the glaze on the bottom of the test tile before it goes in. Not
after. You will not remember, and a tile you can't identify is just a
small tile.
A trimmed foot changes how a bowl feels in the hand more than anything
else I do to it. It's the last five minutes and it's most of the object.
On the wheel at the moment
Trying to make a jug I actually like. The pouring is easy enough to fix —
it's the handle that keeps letting it down, either too thin to hold when the
thing is full or so heavy it looks bolted on.
Current approach is to throw the body first and live with it for a few
days before pulling anything. Handles made to fit a pot you've been looking
at seem to come out better than handles made to a plan.