Did my own pseudo-triathlon today.
Rode my bike 35 miles.
Then ran another 5 miles.
Followed by an evening marathon of glazing in the studio!!!

Okay, so I’m not sure that last one counts…
as I also finished off 1/2 a bag of Oreo’s!!!

As much as I hate glazing, you’ve got to start somewhere. So I’m getting ready to pull out the buckets, stir ’em up and start the dipping! Let the glazing begin…

So there’s been a lot of “stray” bisque piling up in my studio. Lots of leftover pieces that didn’t fit into my last firing. So I’ve decided to share a cone 10 glaze kiln this coming week. Now I’ve got a lot of glazing to do… and most people know how much I hate glazing!!!

Tonight I finally got to unload my soda kiln. You don’t know how tough it is to wait. You’ve worked so hard to make the stuff, waited for it to dry, fire it, glaze and then fire it again. You want to see it as soon as possible!!! But of course, the kiln decides to cool off at it’s own speed… and you can only open it when it’s good and ready. So finally… after waiting all day… I finally opened it… revealing the treasures inside brick by brick!

A little closer examination of my pots… and some kiln posts?!!!

So now everything is unloaded, packed up, piled into my car and shlepped into my storage room. Now I need to find some time to unpack everything, do a little prepping, cleaning, pricing and RE-packing to get ready for this weekend’s art fair in Schaumburg!

So I’ve been glazing a lot. Getting ready for my upcoming soda kiln. Glazing. Cleaning. Wadding. Getting them all ready for their trip downstairs to the soda kiln. At this point, I have one side done of my rolling cart. It’s a LOT of the smaller pieces. The ones that seem to take so much more time. But the good side is, that once my rolling cart is full of glazed work, I know that it pretty much equals a full soda kiln load. So I have one side done… more glazing & wadding tomorrow!!!

And yes, I’ve once again added on my masking tape “safety belts.” As I need to roll my cart down the hallway, take it down the rickety freight elevator, and then roll i tall the way onto the kiln room, I have found that some pots like to “jump off” the cart if you’re not careful. So a few “safety belts” help keep everyone safely in place!

So I pulled out all of my bisque today to start the glazing process. Which I must admit is my least favorite part of the whole process?! Every time I start I keep thinking that I need to find someone to do this for me?! Ha… like that will ever happen?!

And this is just the first half…
there’s another bisque kiln firing that I still need to unload & glaze as well!

I’ve know Steven for several years now. And I’ve loved his glazed textures even longer.
When Steven moved from Kansas City to Sandwich, Illinois, my friend & incredible ceramic artist Cory McCrory introduced us. We ended up working together as I did a lot of graphic design work for him while he was opening up Center Street Clay. He has since moved on, and moved back to Kansas City, Missouri. It’s always so much fun to see Steven on the Minnesota Pottery Tour at Richard Vincent’s studio location. Not only does he bring a lot of gorgeous pots, but he’s also a lot of fun to talk with and make fun of!!! And if you ever run into him somewhere… remind him that he still owes me a bunch of dinnerware!!! I know I remind him EVERY time I see him. And frequently on his Facebook too!!!

For more information and details about Steven and his work, click on his website here www.stevenhillpottery.com or from the list of LINKS in the right side column of my blog.

So it was another round of glaze testing. I’ve been considering a little shift to do some cone 6 glazing & firing. I figure a little “pop” of color would be great. And the smaller kiln that I could fire more frequently would be a nice benefit. And if that weren’t enough, I would be even more thrilled if I could find a few good cone 6 oxidation glazes that also work in cone 10 reduction. So these are the first four samples. Cone 6 on the left, cone 10 on the right. Not sure if I’m “thrilled” with any of these yet… gotta make more!

Okay, so I’ve mixed up a few. Dipped a few.
And now the results are starting to come back from the kiln. These were the first four tests… which were designed to be cone 6 glazes, but I thought I would try them in a cone 10 kiln as well. You never know when it might work in both, right!? You can always dream…

So here’s the deal… I’m looking fro some glazes that cover well, accentuate my stamping and maybe even do some really cool breaking or color variation along the way?! So I’ve decided to try a few new glazes. And if I need to start a little cone 6 firing for an added pop of color in my inventory, then so be it.

Like I said, these are cone 6 glazes fired in a cone 10 reduction kiln. I’m pretty pleased by the results. Encouraged by these results. And hopefully that the cone 6 tests will look even better – after being fired in the kiln they were intended for! I’m hoping to get the cone 6 samples back later this week!

In the meantime, if anyone out there has some good cone 6 glaze recipes that you would be willing to share, send ’em my way! Again, I’m looking for good colors that break well on stamped textures.

Well, I’ve run out of bisqued test tiles. Yeah, the ones I made back in January, but who’s counting? Since I went through that first batch so “quickly”, I figured I needed to make another batch so I can get them bisqued and move forward!

So I started by throwing two bottomless cylinders, one in stoneware and another in soda clay. I added a bit of texture & stamping to help simulate how the glaze test might react on one of my “real” pots if I ever get that far.

Once the cylinders were leatherhard, it was time to cut them up to create some standing test tiles. I threw them with some intentional “glaze traps” at the bottoms. That way if the glaze test runs a lot it will get caught on the tile, and not run onto the kiln shelf.

As I smoothed out the edges, I also added some numbers to the fronts of them. I figure it’ll be part of my coding system, to keep track of which test tile matches up with which batch of glaze after it’s been fired.

So now they’re all lined up and drying overnight…