Is there a "too beautiful" thing?

                    

"wow, that's just too beautiful" shoot one of my friends when seeing freshly fired pieces. A truly lovely description of the overwhelming experience and feelings. I believe there are not such things as a "too beautiful", "too good" "too tasty" "too wise" or "too pleasurable". But there are definitely limitations of our minds, limitations of how much of the "good" we are actually able to embrace and fully live thru. And I also believe that training ourselves in handling more of the good, more of the beauty of the life, is simply worthwhile effort.

Czech Yixing- part two

Attentive readers of this blog maybe remember- there was 1,3kg of the Zi Ni clay delivered to my workshop and for first three teapots I have used only half of it. We unloaded kiln with the rest of the clay in it several days ago. As you probably already anticipate, I have remodeled it in to teapots. This time, I have tried to make them smaller and with different shapes.

But first, take a look at few pictures from loading of the kiln...

Some small stoneware teapots, partly glazed by Nuka...

Smallest teapot from the Czech YiXing serie...

Finally there is enough horsetail growing around so I can use it for decoration  on our pots ( you can't find  that weed during winter)

Black Magda Teapot- slip glaze (which we call "Black Magda") on porcelain body...

Thick Nuka glaze- kind of ash glaze. Yes, it is the one which you can see on "Gem Number One"

Here you can see two of those "YiXing" teapots...in coldest part of our kiln.

And the same part of the kiln after firing...

And finally, here you can judge all four "Czech YiXing" teapots I made...

For more pictures of these, please visit this picasa album

 It was pleasure to get know and work with this clay. I hope that those teapots will bring pleasure to their new owners and are going to make their teas better.

Thank you for reading!

Firing Under The Moon

First firing of the year. Waxing moon keeps an eye on snow-covered garden, hills as well as on frozen ponds. Before its edge touch the ground, all cones are going to be tired and I will go to bed.

Fire and Snow. Lights and Shadows.

Cones

For today I chose more or less solely ceramic topic. There were several questions lately: To what temperature do you fire your pieces? How many hours do you fire? Every time, when someone new sees us around the kiln during firing there is a question: How do you know, when to stop?  And I every time start to replay with opening one of our peepholes...

What you can see in such peephole depends on temperature and your "ability" to see. What you should see (among others) is holder or stand with what is called cones or more precisely pyrometric cones. I talk about small pieces of ceramic, which potters use for measuring of heatwork (combined effect of temperature and time). Although it can seems to be kind of not easy to get for "first lookers" the principle is simple and quite natural.

First cone melted down, second one start to soften...

Cones are made from mixture of ceramic materials  (the number of cone determines temperature -time value which can show during firing). More precise and wider definitions you can find reading Wiki. What maybe you can miss there is written between lines: for firing of ceramic is temperature as important as time. You can fire with thermometer, pyrometric cones or with other equipment, but than you will need to watch your watch. Basic benefit of cones lies in ist ceramic nature - it measure heatwork not temperature. For example: when thermometer shows actual temperature 1260°C for let's say one hour then cone 10 (1320°C when rise-up of temperature is 150°C/hour) starts to show us that its time is coming. It shows us how pots (clays and glazes) are feeling. And that is what I am interested in. How my pieces inside the kiln feel not what temperature is there.

Cone 6a in the midle of the kiln has just touch base...

In most cases we use five cones in three peepholes. There are three cones in hottest part of the kiln (06a, 9 and 11), one 6a in the middle of the kiln and one 6a. in coldest part of the kiln. First cone which start to react to rising temperature is 06a which should refer to 960°C. In this time we know that we should start first stronger reduction period. This 06a cone is usually down after around four hours of the firing (not counting several hours of pre-heating). Then after another eight-nine hours, the cone 9 starts slowly go down. Here more slowly means better - it is period, when pots need time to ripen. This cone nine should refer to temperature around 1300°C. After two aditional hours or so cone eleven goes down. Here it is already very difficult to see those cones - it is "white heat" and you need some experiences to recognize what is going on in there. This cone eleven refers to 1350°C. When this final front cone is down we start to watch cones thru peepholes in the midlle and in the back. Depending mostly on how tight the kiln is loaded after one up to five hours also the last 6a (1250°C) cone is down. This "firing curve" is not from school handbook but based on experiences with several hundred firing of different kilns. Each single firing is then our teacher for work in the future. And the best time to learn is during unloading a kiln we have fired. We can see mistakes we have made as well as ways to improve.

Thank you for reading and Happy New Year!

The "French Autumn" sets II -after firing

We were again very busy in our studio and I couldn't found few minutes to take pictures of those new "French sets". Today I finally did it...

This post will be again more about pictures then about words. I hope you will enjoy them. Every question, observation or comment is welcome. For now just let me say that the French clay, which we have brought from our trip, is not only very nice to work with but also wonderful in the fire. I like the almost black -rusty color. But as I have expected it is not for the hottest parts of our kiln. We fire pretty high and also in quite strong reduction. And this combination is usually crucial for high iron clay bodies. We use several clays with similar iron base like this French one and we have to fire them in colder parts of our kiln. You will see on few pictures below what may happen if such clay is over fired in heavy reduction. It is walking on the edge...

Without glaze...

 Seeing pieces like this I often recall a Masakazu Kusakabe's exclamation during unlouding kiln with him " Look, look - such a wonderful crack! So natural"

Thank you for reading.

The "French Autumn" sets - part I.

Sharp reader of my blog has probably caught promise I have made here. I have mentioned my plan to share with you journey of the red stoneware clay from Dordogne River to our kiln. At first, I thought about to make few tests, then create few teapots and share with you the "best of" it. But then I realized that it could be interesting for some of you to see those first tea sets before firing. And so I dicided to show you those unfired pieces without knowing final results. Kiln has been lighted today and will be preheated overnight. The firing should end during tommorow night. Pictures, which you can see here I took (still with red fingers) a week ago.

If those cups will survive each will hold around 50ml of tea...

Here you can see drying white clay. I got chunk of this white clay together with the red one from Meyssac potter Laetitia. This one is kind of majolica clay (for low temperature) from Limoges region. I decided to use it as a white slip - an under glaze decoration. Dry clay has been crushed, than mixed with water and sieved thru very fine sieve.



Two teapots were "painted" with Limoges white clay. I left the third one "naked" - without slip and without glaze, just clay and fire.

No matter how many firings I already have done - pure excitement - I still like it.

Thank you for reading.