Wow, the kiln room is cold. It's January, and the kiln room is an unheated addendum to my basement studio. The pots have been sitting in it chillin' in winter cooldown while I was busy with our children and their sweet, beautiful new son. (How many times have you heard me say "Life intervenes"? I'm sincerely grateful for that, too.) The bisque kiln is ready, full of thoroughly air-dried pottery. Tomorrow, it's back to business, and the warming of that room with a red hot kiln, firing the ever so patient bowls, vases and mugs. While the kiln will finally climb to over 2200 Fahrenheit, I'll be sure to go that first 200 degrees very, very gradually. I don't want to shock the ware with rapid temperature change, or it will go crackers on me!
When I unload the bisqued ware, I'll be ready to glaze it. I'm making two kinds of glazed ware recently. There's the pottery coated with the earthy, intermingling colors of my regular glaze palette. Then there's the kind that I put lots of color on in the raw state. Once it's been bisqued, I glaze over the fired-on decoration with clear. It's the difference between this sort of color palette
Dipped, poured, sprayed and sponged glazes
and this.
Underglaze colors brushed and inlaid in the rawware stage, then bisque fired, then covered with clear glaze & fired again to maturity
Variety is interesting!
I love to see the cycle of make-dry-fire-glaze-fire become complete. It's really satisfying to put new work up on my website and on the pedestals of my Gallery Downstairs! But now...to the glaze buckets with the next group of pieces!