Shambling Towards Perfection

Tuesday was the most recent class, and we got our saggar pieces ready to go. I forgot to take pics of that, but this time I sprayed the solution (iron something or other) on instead of painting it, which gives more of a speckled look when you spray lightly as I did. For combustibles, I used a little horse hair, a sprinkling of salt, some steel wool fibers, and a sprinkling of the largest fertilizer pellets we had available. Next, I finished up a raku toadstool that I had started before class: I really like how that came out and I think it'll be awesome in my garden. I intend to use some underglazes on the top to get some bright colors, in addition to the raku metallics. Finally, I did the slip trailing on my last dinosaur plate. It was really, really difficult to get even and not smear it or anything. It came out ok, but I think I should have waited until the slip was thicker. I could definitely use some practice on this technique. At the end of class, I also rolle...

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...