Does anybody like glazing?

I woke up with more good news. The imp has arrived in Norway. That was quick. The lovely Ellen said it took her 5 minutes to unpack him! I make sure that every piece is well wrapped. : )

Now he lives in Ellen's office with Hippocrates. 

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I have spent Tuesday and Wednesday glazing. It is sad to see how few pieces you can glaze in two days! No wonder there aren't many millionaires among glazing ceramic artists! :D Well, except for Grayson Perry, of course.

Dipping rabbits in a glaze bucket was quick. Then cleaning and tidying up pinholes, eyes, the rims and so on will take literally hours. This is Tuesday's work.

Waiting for glaze-firing

Then yesterday, these tiny fiddly things took me a day. The most time consuming ones to glaze are the little chickens! I should be charging a fortune for them, but, of course, I can't! Ladies and gentlemen, if the little ones are priced higher than large ones in my shop, there are good reasons.

This little fellow is also on the shelf, if you look carefully. I have used underglazes. The difficulty of underglazes is if I mix colours by myself, I don't know exactly what colours they would be until they are fired. I have seen shocking results before! it was so shocking that Mike banned me from using one particular colour ever! (... blue) I hope he will be a lovely brownish grey.   

Anteater is being fired right now.

The garden is full of blue flowers.

Balloon flowers

Agapanthus with a cat mess protection net! 

 The studio dog convinced me that she is the descendant of Ammonites! 

Ready to fire.

Hello everyone. How are you today? It has been cold here in Canterbury. We have spent three hours glazing in the studio. Mike popped out to get some sweeties, which we shared with other girls working in the studio. After a couple of hours' concentration, we all needed sugar!

Even so, I spilled my oxide, and broke a part off one of my pieces. I realised that it was time for lunch!

Here are some of the glazed pieces. You might wonder what on earth the black thing is. It is a head. Although it looks like wearing a mud face mask, it should fire to brown. (I hope!)  Paper Crown appears a bit prim. I am finally happy with his face, but had to re-work on the sack he is in. 

On the glaze oxidation firing shelf

On the shelf for reduction firing, you can see my replacement for the broken body. I used my own pine ash glaze, which was made from the pine branches I burnt a couple of winters ago.  I also crowded the shelf with shino pots (pink one is not mine). I don' know all would be able to fit into the next reduction firing. They can wait.

On the glaze reduction firing shelf

 Back home, Mike made a late lunch, pasta with pine nuts and bacon in olive oil, for us. We enjoyed it with our last bottle of The Black cottage, our favourite NZ wine. We then watched BBC program about Delphi. It was interesting. Next was David Attenborough's  program about the Indian sloth bear. We both like history and nature. Although I have frequented Greece in '90's, I have not been to Delphi. I promised Mike that we would visit it together, once our animal family is a bit more manageable.
    

New chameleons, sheep and rabbit from kiln

Hello, everyone. Yesterday morning, we woke up a bit early, because we were excited. We were going to run a glaze firing in our kiln for the first time. If you remember how you felt in the morning of your first school trip, our feeling was very similar to that. We packed the kiln the night before. I double checked all bottom parts of the pieces were clean. Otherwise they would get stuck on the kiln shelves.

Inside the kiln at 1198c.

Kiln controller

Switch on! We kept going to the garage to see how hot the kiln went up. It has to heat up slowly. Anytime I went there, I was listening if there were any bomb! sounds, but nothing. The kiln reached target temperature at 1240C about lunch time. We still went back t the garage to check how cool the temperature came down, in turn, or together. We were just like two excited children laughing and running between the garage and the house in light rain!

It didn't become cool enough last night to open it. So we waited until this morning. Yes, we woke up a bit early again this morning. Ta-da! Everyone was safe. Kiln shelves were also safe. Here are some photos I took this morning.

a snap shot of sheep and rabbit

It was our test run for our glazes. We fired a few new pieces and re-firing pieces. It went well. The white glaze above was a bit thicker than usual. So some of details were buried. I textured the middle sheep, and decorated him with iron oxide. They look like sugar coated. I will take photo individually tomorrow.

   

My new chameleon, no name yet!

Oribe glaze was low, and slightly thick, I wanted to see how it would fired. You can see he looks stunning!

He is a character!

I love him!

I also run a test on my new chameleon chopstick rests. It was success! They look so cute! I want one for myself, too! Bigger ones are for adults, and little ones for kids.

'Mimi, do you like them?'

They are doing synchronised swimming!

They look like this before firing. They look Japanese traditional sugar deserts!
 

Chameleons and sunfish chopstick rests

So we have had a happy day. There are much more to glaze and decorate. Next sunny day will be our second glaze firing day!

How about a long walk on the beach instead?

     

The last day for our ceramic course.

Hello ladybird! I didn't hang laundry where he was sunbathing.

 Hello everyone!I hope you have a good day. Here in Canterbury, we had marvellous sunshine, but a bit cold. I saw a male student looking cold in T-shirts and shorts, when I walked our dogs in a light coat and scarf!

Tulips in the garden.

Pearl needed a jumper.

They are ready to a kiln.

Today was the last day for kilns for the term, and I took a day off work in order to finish all decoration for the two busts. At the course, we took three hours to glaze these pots and Mike's other two large bowls. We are going to collect them next Monday. We keep our fingers crossed!

Our bisque ware.

Oribe pots and Kiwi, the Red fronted Kakariki

Hello everyone!
It was a very cold day. Maximum temperature was 3-4 degree. They say it is getting colder.

Here are my two green pots. Left one is a new one, which I have collected today, and right one is last year's. I am happy with them! The glaze colour is so pretty, like a gem! Tommorow I will take better photographs of them and all the other pots that came out of a kiln, if there is any daylight to speak of.
  

My green Oribe pots taken at night

My name 'Midori' means phonetically 'green' in Japanese. And you guessed right, green is my most favourite colour. I have always loved this dark deep green.

The most beautiful green I have ever seen was on my beloved kakariki, Kiwi. He was a red fronted kakariki. He had shiny bright but deep green plumage. I had never tired of his beauty. We had taken lots of photographs, but the photos did no justice to his beauty. I loved him dearly, as much as I could ever love anyone on the Earth.

Meet Kiwi:  http://www.takaki1.freeserve.co.uk/kiwi.htm

New cups from kiln - our collaboration

The face cup that I decorated for Mike's cup came up. Umm, iron oxide was too thin. The underglaze, the red and blue, was also burnt out a bit, and lost details. I should have painted much thicker. Next time, I will make one with white earthenware, so colours will not get burnt. I painted cobalt oxide at the handle.

Here is the Mike's cup with my handle from the same firing. This is our new batch of cream glaze, which I thought it was too watery before using. Usually this cream makes warmer hue than this. But, Mike is happy with this cool beauty.

It is an elegant cup. It would be a great pleasure to use. We have made more cups with these glaze combination. I hope they also come up beautifully.

Ceramics course

Hello. It was our ceramics day today. I collected bisque fired works. These are three of them. I will decorate them in the evenings this week.

Everyone was there. Bev showed me her porcelain buttons, holly and flower shapes. She cut them out with cookie cutters. They were splashed with chromium and cobalt oxide. Clair had a hard week last week and kept telling me that she was sleepy. I hope she drove back safely.

They are ready to be decorated.

I also glazed the face cup. The clear glaze I wanted to use was rock solid and a mixer can't reach its solid bottom, so I used another one. I hope it goes well. I prepared four glaze tests. Mike also glazed his mug the handle I made, and made two glaze samples.

I cut my finger at glaze room, so I couldn't do anyhthing with clay after that.

According to papers, today is the most depressing day because Christmas finished, it is still cold and dark, and bills from Christmas shopping spree land at the doorsteps. Today I felt a bit tired after the busy weekend, but I have recharged myself while I was glazing pots. To me, doing something really helps to forget gloomy feeling.

Good night!

New pots from the kiln

This is one of the best from the last firing of the year. Cream glaze broke to pink.It is the size of an ordinary mug.

Large Creamer

Large creamer

The handle of a large creamer

And this one is a bit shorter. Both had same glaze and in the same firing, but colours vary. This has paler cream color, and oribe the green glaze became matt. The mystery of pottery. 

Medium creamer

Medium creamer

This saucer is for our friend who bought a coffee cup at Open House. I hope she likes it.

Saucer for a friend

Bushbaby, monster in the woods, faun and minotaur

Hello everyone. We had a flop on the Christmas sale. Oh well. We did post-analysis, and forgot about it.

Meet my Bushbaby. He looks so funny. If somebody could brighten up my dark autumn days it must be him! I made him on the spur of the moment as usual. When I saw his face, I knew that he is the kind of character I like to make. Funny, off-beat and some presence. When you look at him, you can't help smiling.

Bushbaby

I intend to keep him as my companion. He took a windowsill position in our bedroom.

Chunky from side

This glaze mix took a lot of tests and time. I liked it a lot, but the results were not consistent. For example, these below are also same glaze mix, and they all look different. Monster is lighter and faun is darker coloured than the Bushbaby. Of course, Minotaur on the banner is also same glaze mix.

Little monster in the woods

Because of the inconsistency, I may not use it again.

Faun

Minotaur

We are bushbabies too! Can we go to your bedroom? ( No!)