Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: holiday, ornaments, process, production, textures

So here we are… Month #2 in our Holiday Ornament Challenge!
Sarah Chapman and I have committed to creating a new ornament every month.
Mine will be clay, her’s will be metal. Who knows?… some day maybe a combo?

Sarah’s ornament this month is copper with brass chain connecting the pieces and has
a “torch” patina. She made the copper bells using a form folding technique called the
“Heisted Cup.” Here’s a link for all you metal’s people out there who would like to try it.
Click here… “Heisted Cup.” The process is magical. And I especially love the “torch”
patina effect on copper. So much fun… and maybe three angels will get their wings?!

My ornament started out as a star pillow, but then I got a little carried away. I decided that
the “pillows” don’t need to be closed.  So I left the sides open, leaving a nice void inside.
My plan is to soda-fire these – and I hope that the inside gets some groovy flashing marks.
So far, the plan is that one side is painted with flashing slip, and the other side will have some
glaze inlaid into the impressions. Once they’re fired, they’ll also get a metal hoop going
through the middle of the star to hang from like my original ornaments.

Unfortunately, again this month, I don’t have any fired ornaments to show off yet.
I’m still building enough work to fill the kiln before I can fire it. So the pieces are piling up.
Once I have some pieces fired and ready to show… you’ll see these and all previous
ornaments again. Finished & fired… not just greenware… again!

1 Comment

Kim Wicks

February 27th, 2013

I am JUST NOW able to see what you came up with for February…okay…it was worth the wait. I’m sure the finished product will be spectacular!

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