So no catastrophic failure with the earthenware firing but each piece had disappointing flaws – learning opportunities!

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The flower motive on the pen pot should have had more colour and a lot more precision. The dark orange glaze around the rim, burnt out to brown. The tea-light holder/incense burner had a beautifully coloured but pockmarked glaze and the sugar bowl with its ill-fitting lid, suffered crazing of the transparent glaze a full day after it came out of the kiln. On the plus side my clay mark as a sprig came out very clean, the satin white glaze on the pen pot is good and I’m not too fussed about the pockmarks in the mottled orange glaze, they give the piece character!

Change of plan – I fired the jug and it’s OK. It was fired at 1225°C, a slightly lower temperature and it seems to have brought out more of the green in the glaze than when fired at 1250°C.

Just a little. I haven’t got into a rhythm of making and glazing so I had a backlog of pieces to glaze. First to get finished were the stoneware pots; a “set” of four bowls, the suspect bowl from Sara’s, a tea-light holder and the jug. First off – the jug wouldn’t fit in the kiln. Bill had said that as soon as you get a kiln, you’ll need a bigger one!

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This was my first stoneware firing and the results were mixed; the tea-light holder came out as intended (triumph) but the coloured motifs in the four bowls either burnt out or became incorporated into the main glaze (disappointment). The solution may be to reglaze them as a solid colour – we’ll see. The suspect bowl, which I thought I might have got away with by fixing the cracks with paper clay, caught up with me. A good strong yellow glaze but one of the cracks persisted and the glaze was in fact not as even as it could have been. I’ve more to learn here.

Next for firing are earthenware pots; another tea-light holder, a sugar bowl and a small cylinder with a flower motif. And then back to stoneware firing for the jug.

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Well after all the excitement of loading the kiln, watching the temperature rise and the programme move from section to section and then cool overnight, it was wait and see whether all the pieces had survived. All looking good so a lot of glazing to be done.

But before that there was clay to be worked. The roughed out design brief below was the concept but the shape didn’t materialise and I got no further than a bowl base. So not to be disheartened I made a separate top section to be sat on top of the base. Despite best efforts the fit of the two sections wasn’t great but some reshaping with the surform allowed an approximation to the design brief although missing some of the bulbous section I’d been aiming for – next time!

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So as with all blogs the trick is to keep them up to date but with the Corona Virus things have been slow although not yet stopped. I left a disappointingly small pot and a half glazed sugar bowl with Bill and my most successful thrown piece to date with Sara – see below. But in the meantime I have been pottering away although without the guidance of my two gurus, Sara and Bill, so that times when one or other of them might have asked ” do you really want to do it like that?” or my approach to a piece might have prompted a raised eyebrow sufficient for me to ask advice, none of that is available. The upshot is that I have been learning the hard way. For example, I made another sugar bowl and scraped away at the foot ring so the base when it dried was paper thin! I have repaired it with paper clay and we’ll see.

I now have enough to put into the newly acquired kiln and this will be the first firing in earnest within the next day or two when the pieces are sufficiently dry…………. The excitement mounts but Grayson Perry quoting the Chinese described ceramics as the “cruelest art”!

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So now I’m taking advantage of having two teachers, Bill at http://www.billkohlerceramics.co.uk and Sara at http://www.bournpottery.co.uk . Bill got me into pottery after I’d taken my granddaughter to one of his sessions. Bill was out of action for a bit and that ‘s when I found Sara with her “Hire my Kiln” and “Pay as you Clay”. As I’m on a steep learning curve I have found it really valuable to have the two different inputs for ideas and techniques.

This week didn’t start well with two collapsed bowls thrown at home and so I was determined to get back on track with bowls thrown with both Bill and Sara. Both have come out smaller than I had hoped and the one at Bill’s has really shrunk as it dried out over the week, both physically (a little) but much more in my mind’s eye!

The sugar bowl with its ill-fitting lid was decorated and is awaiting another bisque firing to hold the design before applying transparent glaze.

The additions this week are then older pieces which I made over the last year.

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This week’s firings all came out safely with great results!

Working on another bowl and a sugar bowl this week – I’ll show you later.

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Tada! Two pots out of the kiln, the cylinder from Week one and the small green stripped globe. The bowl from last week is now glazed and awaits firing, the tiny urn like wise and a new addition, a tiny vase with detailed design glazed and awaiting firing.

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This week has been devoted to decorating three pieces:- a bowl; a small globe; a tiny lidded urn and a cylinder. I hope next week will be the big reveal, when they come out of the kiln. We‘ll see and if I am to follow my vision of triumphs and disasters so will you!

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