Tea time...

Happy Memorial Day!... We unloaded the kiln on Saturday evening and we were like kids in a candy store.... shiny, happy people loving the work that came out of this firing. There were so many good looking pieces from this load. Below are some of my teapots and a large oval vase along with Nancy's awesome Snowy Owl mug. Those are also her faceted cups...the middle one now belongs to me! It was a very hot firing where we flattened 11 all over...and I do mean flattened. We feel that we most likely were closer to a good bent to flat 12. The shinos were really glistening and we had great flashing along with a nice bit of ash spread throughout the kiln. It was a pretty painless firing all in all. We drove it up fairly fast and then held it in the upper temps for about a third of the 20 hour firing time. We added around four and a half pounds of a mixture of soda and soda ash which proved to be plenty.

I am really pleased with my teapots, they came out better than I had imagined. Two or three will be going through another electric kiln firing to incorporate my decal images, but the rest are so juicy that I love them just the way they are now. I made a bunch of tea bowls to go with the teapots and they came out real sweet too.

Four or five out of eight teapots will be going to "Teapots,Teapots,Teapots" an exhibition of (guess what?!) teapots at the Strohl Art Center in the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua New York. If you have been reading this blog for a while, you will know that I oversee the ceramics facility there in the summers...firing and maintaining all the kilns, ordering supplies, coordinating with rotating faculty, and more general studio management. We have some new faces with us there this summer and you can count on me blogging from there because there is so many cool art oriented happenings going on ...in fact, that may be where my next posting comes from. I am taking a bit of a vacation and will not be making or firing anything in the next few weeks. So check out the images from unloading the booty ...and tune back in to check out Chautauqua 2010!