Last firing of 2020

A good glaze firing this last weekend after a couple of late nights spent glazing my recent pots. Mostly consisting of crank planters, I was limiting my glaze range use to just three colours; to save time in mixing glazes as well as creating a consistent feel to the pots when they get onto my online shop.

I have been working on throwing ‘moon jar’ shapes on the wheel and I had three examples in this firing. Fairly successful, but like all potters, I shall always strive for the perfect shape and never achieve it. Moon jars are essentially a hollow ball with a footring and a solid rim, so in profile the vase represents the roundness of the moon. It is not the easiest of shapes to throw on the wheel; when I get better at it I shall endeavour to put up a video of my throwing, but that will have to be next year.

I have made a hand-coiled large garden planter for myself, just for my own pleasure. I enjoyed the slower rhythm of building up the walls, but also getting to the decoration stage, using a thick oxide wash made up of 50:50 mix of Manganese Oxide and Red Iron Oxide. Against the toasty colour of the fired crank clay, the oxide makes a bold dark pattern and I revelled in broad tribal striped patterns and a boarder around the rim and handles. It is going to look good when planted up and supporting plants on my allotment.

Below there are sequences of images of the building of the planter and notes about decoration and firing.