The weekend before last I was in Sheffield, helping to fire a smokeless kiln with the Manor Stokes Wood Firing Group. A very enjoyable experience, which was mainly thanks to the hard work and excellent preparation by the group organisers...a big thank you to Penny and Sarah for making the whole thing possible.
This was the second time the kiln had been fired and apart from the temperature sticking a couple of times, it went very smoothly and all the cones were down after about thirteen hours. Pots on the bottom two layers of the kiln received plenty of ash and I'm guessing the temperature must have gone well over 1300 centigrade as a few of my pots started to bloat in places. I need to remember next time to put pots made of recycled clay higher up in the kiln where the heat isn't quite so intense.
Most of the glazes came out beautifully with very few faults, especially the tenmokku on porcelain which was fabulous. Some of the shinos also came out wonderfully well with rich oranges and reds and some nice ash deposits. Here are a few of my results, I will add some more later:
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| Bottle vase with fen slip, dug straight from the ground |
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| The earthenware, fen slip almost came out like a tenmokku! |
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| Bottle vase with ash glaze, approx 7 inches tall |
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| White slip brushed on under the glaze has added variation in colour |
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| Sake cup with shino glaze |
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| Sake cup with shino glaze |
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| Vase with shino glaze, approx. 7 inches tall |
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| Tea caddy, glazed by fire and ash, approx 4 inches tall |
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| Sake cup with flashing from flames. Shino on the inside |
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| shino on this light body came out very orange indeed! |
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| Shino beaker with under-glaze brushwork |
