Kicking off the morning with my favorite four letters!!!
Fresh new pots cooling for this weekend’s art fair in Schaumburg!!!

Great old kiln hidden in the woods. Moss covered, rusted through & seemingly unused for years at the Matt Krousey stop of the St. Croix Valley Pottery Tour. My guess is that’s it’s still a leftover from the Bob Briscoe days there?!

Another TEXTURE TUESDAY with some fun textures & glaze pooling effects on these soda-fired “hybrid” mugs! I’m always enamored with this glaze effect when it comes out of the soda kiln… and the glaze highlights & breaks in all the right places!

Just now getting around to sharing some photos from my soda-firing last weekend. I unloaded Monday night… but then somehow the week got away from me! Here’s a full look at the kiln after taking the front door off. You always tend to hold your breath while unbricking… hoping that everything went well… that everything looks good… and that there’s not too much dark-gray “dolphin skin” over-reduction!!! So I was very pleased when I got the brick door off and saw all of the fun colors & light clay surfaces. Even more fun as I continued to dig into the kiln unloading the whole thing!

And now for the ever-popular… but never acknowledged “ugly” side of soda-firing. All of the parts that most people don’t ever realize happen behind-the-scenes… scraping kiln shelves, sweeping & mopping, stacking kiln furniture and my least favorite task… adding a new layer of kiln wash on all of the shelves I used in my firing. Luckily, I get to look at all the pretty pots after all of this drudge work!

The soda kiln has been emptied… with plenty of new pots ready to prep, price & pack for upcoming shows. Overall a beautiful soda-firing. I love all of the brighter colors that grab my attention while unloading! Such a fun treasure hunt!!! Okay, so there were two “casualties” with globs of soda goo & chunks of who-knows-what in them… but enough about that… back to pretty mugs!!! Here’s a fun stack of new mugs… and one beauty that might just need to join my own personal collection???

A couple bricks removed to help with cooling so I can unload the kiln tonight. Can’t see much… but that one little snippet looks pretty good so far.

Always exciting towards the end of a soda firing. The kiln is in reduction, and the soda mixture has been inserted … so it’s flying around inside wherever the flames go. Leaving some soda-glaze magic along the way. Can’t wait to see what this FIRE did to my pots. Fingers crossed.

Glowing orange… the kiln continues to heat up even as it is placed in “body reduction”. Still a few hours to go… but always fun to play with fire!!!

Bricked up & closed for the night. It was a “quick sleep” and now I’m already back at the studio firing!!! Bricks in, peeps in & ignition started!!! An early start to a long day for firing… plus random studio “spring cleaning” projects throughout the day!