Tonight I was the substitute teacher for the Beginning Soda Firing Class at Lillstreet. We discussed the basic firing process, how a kiln works, where the sweet spots are in the kiln… and basically tried to answer any & all of their questions. I know I gave them a lot of information. I hope I didn’t overwhelm them too much.

During our discussions, they expressed their concern & confusion of what all the soda flashing slips look like. So I suggested that we make some test tiles so they can see for themselves. And yet most of them also wanted to get some wheelthrowing time in too. So I made them a deal… if I make the test tiles, they needed to add the slip and keep track of the results. Deal done. Challenge accepted.

So here are my test tiles made out of soda clay…

And here are their class test tiles after Laury & Linda painted on some of the slips. We decided to make two test tiles for each color. One for a high soda area of the kiln, and the other for a low-soda area so they can see the difference. We also decided to leave half of the tiles plain clay just so they can see the contrast of colored slip against the raw clay color after firing.

I can’t wait to see how these test tiles turn out after firing in the new soda kiln! And I REALLY hope that this project helps these “new to soda firing” students understand a bit more about flashing slips!