Tuesday 27 November 2012

burning terracotta

At college someone accidently put a terracotta pot into the porcelain firing... we expected disaster but got a beautifully toasted and very dark pot. Had been meaning to try this out myself and at last have started testing slip cast terracotta at high temps.


The clear glazed inside makes the pot almost black. Great texture on unglazed areas - a little bit of grit in the clay gives a good feel. I will experiment with a white glaze next time and see how that looks. The pots are amazingly strong and they did not seem to have the same warping/memory problems as porcelain. And I can do a mixed firing with porcelain which is important when trying to juggle space in a tiny kiln. Definitely worthy of more experiments and worth looking at combining porcelain and burnt terracotta items.

Saturday 17 November 2012

more handles

Had another go at handles... trying to save electricity I biscuit fired a mix of pots including some burnished ones which meant I could only go to 800deg. This left the porcelain very brittle and I broke 3 out of 4 of my test mugs before I could glaze them. Another good lesson!

The surviving mug had a smaller and lower handle than the earlier batch and this change did resolve most of the warping issues.