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

White porcelain pieces now with black slip banding… just waiting for them to set-up
to leatherhard for trimming & some sgraffito carving through the black slipped areas.

Categories: porcelain, production, sgraffito

Always feels a little weird to take black slip & paint it on pristine white porcelain…
that is “cherished” as perfectly clean WHITE clay. Now with some black splattered on it.

Categories: porcelain, production, wheelthrowing

Playing with porcelain again. Pretty in white… with some sgraffito plans in the making…

Categories: process, production

Lots of pots later… and almost all of the kiln shelves… the kiln was full. I tried my best to squeeze in as many pots as I could all the way to the top! It’s like a game of TETRIS with pots & shelves. Gotta stack ’em right. Tight… but not too tight. Next to brick up the door, do a little preheat to dry things out and then home for a quick “nap”… for kiln firing started early this morning!

Categories: glaze, process, production

Okay, so the first side of my studio cart is glazed, wadded & loaded.
Time to turn around the cart and start filling the other side with work.
I’ve found that a “full cart” pretty much equals a full soda kiln.
Give or take a few pieces that I might need to glaze as I load?!

Categories: glaze, process, production, soda-fired

Starting off the day by gluing my wads onto the bottoms of the pieces I glazed yesterday… getting them ready for the soda kiln… as well as making room on my work table to glaze the rest of my bisque today!

Categories: glaze, mugs, process, production

Spent a lot of time in the studio glazing… painstakingly inlaying tenmoku glaze into the stamped impressions! And then adding a liner glaze getting ready for this weekend’s soda kiln firing! Lots of mugs… and I still have a long ways to go!!!

 

Categories: glaze, kiln firing, process, production

Getting the glazing & wadding started with mugs… GIDDY-UP!!!

Categories: kiln firing, production

Just loaded my last bisque… had to call it “quits” on making things tonight,
for tomorrow I switch to glazing things!!! Four layers of greenware going into bisque firing. Not packed quite as tight as I would prefer, but it’s the final random pieces that just needed to be fired… including eight kinda freshly made wall vases! Fingers crossed…

Categories: pottery, process, production, stamped, vases

Okay, so one last batch tonight… might be a little “damp”… err, okay WET going into the bisque kiln!!! This time it’s a batch of wall pocket vases “racing” and hoping to make it into Saturday’s soda kiln. Nothing like pushing the calendar a bit… “somehow” it will all get done, right?!