This week I'm wood-firing 43 vessels for Plainsong Kico. They are glazed with Snow Cap Shino that fires as a mix of gray (in reduction) and white (in oxidation). Here are some of them lined up on the shelf in the kiln shed before the load-in.
I'll post more pictures when I have my stoking shift on Thursday... And then pictures of the results at the July 1st kiln unloading!
The firing lasts for three days, followed by a week-long long cool-down.
May fire god Agni be kind to us.
UPDATE: I got less ash and carbon trapping/ graying of the Shino than I hoped for, so the vessels are very subtle/ less tortured than last time. Also, everything that I fired as bisqueware shattered. The pieces that had already been fired to ^10, unglazed in the electric kiln, were fine.
Images (left to right): my stoking shift - the first "kindling shift" in which we raised the temperatures of the fireboxes only by 20-30 degrees F per hour; aerial view of the successfully wood-fired pieces - some of the 36 survivors - you can see some ash glaze in the bottoms; part of the unloading day yield for all the firing participants; the cracking of my bisqueware - note that the shino glaze did not even fuse/adhere to the bisque. It pulled away (shivered) and the pressure of the different expansion/cooling rate of clay and glaze appear to have pulled apart/ fractured the vessels. Luckily only 7 of the vessels I fired were bisqueware.... Firings: always a learning experience!
