Here is another video of pottery making — in this case a very smoothly executed Raku firing with excellent team work by Susan (with the tongs) and Sandy (with the lids.) Enjoy!
Archive for the ‘Arts & Crafts’ Category
Susan’s Raku Firing Video
Thursday, May 18th, 2006Marge’s soda firing video
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006I know, I said that I started this blog to talk about pit firing; but I’m also taking a soda firing class at Pottery Northwest, and I happened to have gotten some good footage of a fellow potter spraying soda into the soda kiln during her firing last week. Oh yeah, I did exactly the same thing a couple days before I took this video for my own firing — but there was no one there to make a video of me doing the pyromaniac thing… Anyway, enjoy. (BTW, Marge is the one spraying, and Brad is the one helping to remove and replace the brick. Great team work!)
The Birth of a Blog
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006This blog was born out of necessity. It all started a couple months ago, when I brought one of my pit fired pieces to some friends to show what wonderful things horse manure can do for a pot. (This piece was smoke-fired in a BBQ using horse manure as fuel — well, actually some wood was used, too! And okay, full disclosure: the pot had also been bisque-fired to cone 06 prior to the firing in the BBQ, and was wrapped in salted raffia with copper carbonate sprinkled about during the smoke-firing. So it’s not just horse poop!)
One thing led to another after the show and tell. Before long I was tasked to organize a pit firing event. Then came the myriad of questions: What kind of clay should I use? What kind of effects can I expect? What kind of forms are good for pit firing? Is there any kind of special preparations that I should do for my pot before the pit fire? What kind of preparation or treatment will cause the effects I see in this pot here?
Or that one over there? (more…)