After a LONG day in the car driving home from Minnesota, we finally made it to my parents house where we switched cars and I continued back into the city. It was late. I was tired. But I knew that I still had work to do. With my next soda kiln less than a week away, I knew that I had to fire one last bisque kiln if I was going to have time to glaze the pieces. So it was a very late night at the studio loading my bisque kiln.

So there I was bringing pieces in from my studio, and taking them down from the shelves in the kiln room. Only to notice some “explosions” on three of the berry bowl plates! And I have no idea what happened?! Three of the plates appear to have had “explosions” while I was out of town.

So here’s the sequence of events… I threw the plates. Dried them to a soft leatherhard. Did a little stamping. Dried some more. Trimmed them and then let them dry in my studio. The next day, I stacked them up and took them down to the kiln room for storage. There were five stacks of four plates. Now I know for a fact that I would never stack plates  if there was ever a chance they were still wet. So the tray of plates was sitting in the kiln room for a couple weeks while I continued to make more work in my studio. And I do this all the time. I frequently have trays of greenware drying until I load my next bisque kiln.

Anyway, when I took the tray of berry bowl plates down, three of the plates had “explosions” on them. It was the top two in one stack, and the top one on another stack. Cracked. Broken. Exploded. And if you look closely, you can even see some of the “rubble” that exploded up and out of the plate?! Someone suggested that maybe something fell and landed on them?… but if that was the case tey would have cracked downwards, not up! And so far… the best “solution” is that there was some moisture trapped inside even though they appeared to be dry. And then somehow the temperature in the kiln room exceeded normal levels… which would have to be hovering above 200-degrees for this kinfd of damage?! Any other possiblities? Any other thoughts on how this might happen???