My Sugar Jar

I love ceramics.  I'd love to do more work with clay.  It's just that my skin doesn't agree, and my naturally cold hands get even colder when working the clay, little twinges in the knuckles reminding me how osteo-arthritis runs in my family.  So I think I will stick with the limited amount of clay work I do to create moulds for my glass, and leave the real stuff to other people.

I was fascinated to read this post by potter Jude Allman about the process of making lids for her storage jars.  They are all so neat!  I loved the little jars she was making and decided to ask her to make one for me, but without the spoon hole.  I will use the jar to store sugar and I want to keep the moist kitchen air out as much as possible; too often I have ended up with a solid bowl shaped sugar lump.

My jar arrived this week and I'm thrilled with it, the neat shape, the subtle glaze, just lovely. Thank you Jude!

You can find Jude's work on Folksy and on Etsy and get a fascinating insight into her processes on her blog.

Ceramics

Another long overdue post... this one about the 2 weeks we spent in the Ceramics department just before Christmas (I told you it was overdue!)

We were working with a porcelain based paperclay - paperclay is more forgiving for beginners like us since any air trapped in the clay can find its way out along the paper fibres during firing, rather than expanding and causing the piece to shatter or break in the kiln.

I spent quite a bit of time finding out how thin I could roll the clay - quite thin here...

... but rolling it out between layers of oiled clingfilm means you can get it really very thin!

Pushing clay through a sieve gave a really interesting texture, although it was then incredibly difficult to handle without crushing.

These pieces were all glazed with a clear glaze applied in the spray booth.  That was fun... the spray is quite high pressure and some of my pieces were so lightweight it was difficult not to fire them across the room!

We also had a go at raku firing.  The pieces were biscuit fired first in the kiln, then we glazed them with a special raku glaze. For the raku firing we used a small kiln built from fire bricks, lined with ceramic fibre and heated with a gas torch.

The firing takes about 30 minutes.  Once the pieces were glowing orange we removed them from the kiln (using tongs!) and plunged them straight into a bin full of sawdust, throwing in handfuls of extra sawdust to cover them and extinguish any flames - very smoky, this bit - and left them to cool.

Any areas left unglazed - like the inside of this vessel - are blackened by the raku firing.

Removing the pieces from the kiln while they are so hot puts a tremendous strain on them.  This vessel had a join around the middle which almost cracked under the strain - fortunately it held together and has been left with a rather nice metallic black line along the join.

I was a teeny bit more adventurous with the colour on this one, and I do like the way the purple has come out.

Smoke Firing Ceramics - part 2

I just thought I'd show you how the best pieces from this batch turned out.  I have finished them with some wax polish and the surfaces are now very pleasingly like sea polished pebbles.

I think we are definitely going to be burning things again this weekend!

Smoke Firing Ceramics

I have a collection of pieces of biscuit fired ceramic from college which have been waiting for me to do ‘something’ with them. They are nothing fancy, just a few experimental bits and pieces made when I was getting used to what I could do with the clay – the pace of the foundation course has been such that there was really no time to become expert in any new skills.

Anyway, after discussions with my college tutor I decided to have a go at smoke firing them – which is basically burying them in something that burns and setting fire to it!

There are potters who do the most amazing things with smoke firing

Smoke fired vessel by Sally Bradley.

Smoke fired vessel by Sian van Driel.

The monochrome colouring is so subtle and, I think, quite beautiful.

Personally, I was going to be happy if I managed to get any colour at all on my pieces, and at least some of them came out still in one piece!

For my ‘kiln’ I used one of those incinerators which look like an old-fashioned dustbin. I put a layer of newspaper in the bottom with a layer of sawdust on top. Then I put a few of my ceramic pieces in, packed around with more sawdust. One of the pieces I wrapped in newspaper with a handful of grass – just to see what happened. And I set fire to it!

I was surprised how much flame and smoke there was – next time I will do it at the bottom of the garden! And I may dampen the sawdust and try to include some slower burning material to try and slow the burn down. So, when it had finished burning I was left with a pile of ash and, amazingly, still whole pieces of ceramic!  Really I should have left it alone overnight but I was so impatient to see the results – fortunately nothing cracked when I took them out.  (The ash is hopefully going to keep the slugs away from our runner beans - apparently they don't like ash?)

So this is what I got – please excuse the dodgy photographs on the concrete – the pieces were still too hot to move! You can see markings where the grass stopped the colouration on the piece on the left – and one of the smaller pieces took the colour only on half of it, which I like very much.

 
They are actually much more coloured than I expected but all in all I am pretty pleased with them for my first attempt.  I will be coating them with a wax polish (when they have cooled down) to protect the surface and give them a subtle sheen - it will be interesting to see how much, if any, of the colour comes off then.  And I shall try again, wrapping some pieces so they are only partly coloured and burning different stuff - I have heard banana skins are interesting...  Watch this space!