Shambling Towards Perfection

During the week I got my dragon egg for saggar mostly finished. It's made around wadded up newspaper as per the "clay potato" technique, plus I did go ahead add two chunks of clay inside the paper so they'll rattle around inside the egg after it's finished, suggesting something's inside. Here it is after I added the first vein, as an experiment: I was pleased with how it looked, so I added 2 more veins. During Saturday's class I finished smoothing the egg's surface out as much as possible, shaped it a bit more, and added a crack so it would look like the egg's inhabitant was attempting to escape. That also conveniently made a nice big opening for expanding air to escape from during firing. I also smushed the veiny bits by paddling them, following a suggestion from my teacher. It makes the veins look a bit more a part of the egg, in my opinion, so I'm quite happy with the effect. Overall I think it turned out pretty well: Saggar fir...

Ok, so, I never actually documented my projects last summer like I had intended, nor did I record the fall session. But hey, it's a new pottery session (started last Saturday, ), so might as well give it another go. We'll be doing raku like usual, as well as a saggar firing  (you coat the piece in a special chemical, then wrap it up in aluminum foil with some combustibles, and fire it like that). Last session we tried obvara for the first time, but pieces had an unfortunate tendency to crack and/or blow up. One takes the red hot piece out of the kiln, dunks it in a "brew" of water, flour, sugar, and yeast and then dunks the piece in water, going back and forth between the two a few times. So, you know, blowing up happens... We voted on which special firing techniques to do this session and I'm guessing that's why obvara lost. Ah, well. My plans for the special firings are to make dragon eggs. I made an obvara dragon egg last session which somehow did not...