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

Just spending a little “quality time” with my diamond grinding disc from DiamondCore Tools !!! Cleaning off a few drippy soda-fired. bottoms. Notice the mug bottom before & after… plus a few more to come!

Just put the grinding bat on the wheel, wet the disc, wet the pot, press… spin… grind… CLEAN!!! Thank you DiamondCore Tools for making this ugly task so much easier & smoother!!!

Categories: kiln firing, process, production

After a couple hours of loading the kiln last night, it’s always great to get to the end & brick up the door. One by one, brick by brick. Hiding the pots… knowing that we won’t see them again until after the soda-firing process works its “magic”… fingers crossed.

Categories: glaze, process, production

It was pretty late last night when I finally finished glazing in my studio… lots of pots, lots of wadding! So I packed both sides of my studio cart and put some masking tape “seat belts” on it so none of the pots would jump off as I rolled everything downstairs on the rickety freight elevator!

Categories: kiln firing, process, production

As though I didn’t already have plenty still to glaze for tonight’s soda kiln loading… let’s just toss in a few MORE from this last minute bisque kiln full. More is more, right?!

Categories: glaze, process, production

Trying to stay productive… stamps are “filled” with tenmoku glaze… and just added a liner glaze too! Still needing a little clean-up around the rims… and then a lot of wadding for the soda kiln. I’m scheduled to load Friday night… and I still have a LOT of glazing to do. Eyes on the prize!!!

Categories: glaze, mugs, process, production, stamped

Doing a little glaze inlay into the stamped impressions on a bunch of mugs! I’m filling the stamps with a tenmoku glaze, and then wiping off the “top” surface so the glaze only stays in the texture impressions.

Categories: mugs, process, production

Looks like I’ve got more than a little glazing to do tonight… ugh… not my favorite part of the process! But I do LOVE the results… so I guess it’s worth it?!

Categories: process, production, stamped, textures

Another batch of textured fortune cookies drying in my studio!

Categories: production, stamped, vases

A quick batch of medium vases…
stamped & painted with colored flashing slips for my next soda kiln!

Categories: color, mugs, process, production, stamped

So we recently got a new slip color at Lillstreet.
RED… and not a rusty iron red, but a true holiday red!!!

I’ve used it a couple times with some of my Summer Campers… but never on my own work. So this is a test. I can’t wait to see if it does anything cool in the soda kiln. Might be nice, might not be… we’ll see in a couple weeks!