Well the final countdown has begun. Setup for the Alberta Gift Show begins Friday morning at 8:00. We headed into the studio around 9 this morning and right away headed for the big kiln. Was still 450 degrees so we waited for…oh…ten minutes or so then opened it and saw
Everything as it was expected. All the big platters made it through in one piece and the glaze stayed on the vases.
First the vases came out:
Then the platters. This is the stack of shelves I described yesterday.
We set the three vases and platters up on the tea boxes as we intend to do them at the show. We think they look pretty good. Once we hit them with the halogen lights they should sing!
Once we got the 16 unloaded we loaded a bisque into the 10. Mugs and small items thrown yesterday.,plus some things that didnt fit in the 7 cu ft from yesterday (It was still at 700 so not unloading it today). Started a very slow ramp up to 150 and then a long hold as some of the ware had not changed colour completely.
I started waxing rims on casseroles to prevent the lids from sticking. We use liquid wax emulsion applied with an artist’s paint brush.
Cindy washed pots and sorted them onto tables by preferred colour. I stirred up the glaze and we glazed all the Raven Wing, Northern Lights, and Mountain Mist pots.
We loaded the 16 cu ft kiln as full as possible. The really nice thing about these three glazes is that they all fire exactly the same way so we could load pots of different colours wherever they would fit.
Once the final pot was placed Cindy did her three bows to the kiln gods and we fired it up. A complete cycle takes over 20 hours so we won’t get into the 16 until Wednesday. We’ll do a quick turnaround on it and fire another glaze load right away.
Tomorrow we’ll unload the bisque from the 7 and reload it with the pots that are left. They are in "speed dry" mode tonight, sitting on top of the 10 cu ft while it does its bisque fire:
The bisque will come out of the ten tomorrow as well and we will load a glaze load in it. Starting with the granite and aqua pots.
I also want to get started on the extension wall for the booth. Since we increased to a 15 x 10 foot corner I have to get the modifications ready.
Cool tonight, good sleeping weather, so…
nite
September 9th, 2005 at 8:46 pm My sister, Sherry Pruett just dropped in to check out your product line. She left a note saying I sent her. I love your new pieces, and glazes. As always, Cindy, your work is amazing. Love you both