Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: kiln firing, pottery, process, production, studio

After three days of glazing & wadding, I finally loaded my kiln tonight.
And it might be my tightest packed kiln yet?! So now it’s time for a couple hours
of sleep, a quick shower and then it’s pack to the studio to get the firing started!

But first… a few photos…
Here’s my studio cart filled to the brim with glazed & wadded pots.
Thanks again to my Dad for making me a wonderful cart that works so well.

And here’s the Lillstreet soda kiln empty… just waiting to be filled up!

After about an hour of loading, the back stack was finished. I have a lot of work, and wanted
to get the most bang for my buck, so I packed the kiln pretty darn tight. Barely any kiln shelf
is showing as every surface has a pot or a tile covering it! I’m pretty pleased with myself…
notice how close to the arch my tall textured slab vases fit right in there!!! Sweet…

Part way through the front stack, I realized I didn’t have quite enough large pieces glazed.
So I went back up to my studio to glaze a couple more oval casseroles and a few serving
bowls. Then it was back down to finish off the loading!

I always find the front stack (of two shelves deep) to be a little tougher than the back stack.
I think it’s because the back stack is smaller and earlier on… so you still have a lot of sizes
to choose from and feel like you have a LOT of room to fill still. When you get to the front
stack, reality starts to set in and you start to realize you might not be able to squeeze
everything in?! Along the way, you start to get creative. I decided to split the two-shelves
into two separate stacks. And when I got to very end, I ran out of tall pieces, so I “floated”
a kiln shelf instead of leaving any dead air space at the top.

So, close to five hours later, my kiln was loaded… at long last.

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