This week was all about soda firing; GH and I loaded up the kiln on Monday and fired it off Tuesday evening. The firing went until Wednesday evening, and I introduced soda before cone 9 was soft, when cone 9 was half down, and at temperature (about 3.25 lbs total). I put in two sculptures and some goblets/cups, all of which were mostly raw bodied with lightly sprayed or liner shino and soda ash and wood ash sprinkled in places. We unloaded today, and at first glance, I’m very happy with the results.

I was most happy with my sculpture on the bottom shelf that had some cool effects from the wood ash and concentrated areas of soda. I actually like the drier areas that occur from fast cooling/cold spots in the kiln (we think the area by the flue was cooler and only got to cone 9). I’ll be interested to see if I can recreate this in the future; I liked the stone-like quality of the underdeveloped shino on one of my goblets (bottom right pic) but I had glazed it a while back and of course didn’t take notes on which shino I used.

One thing I’m not thrilled about is the consistent metallic/glossiness on the raw clay on my sculptural work. I think it works in places, and my eyes don’t mind it, but its really hard to capture the form with how reflective and shiny the surface is. I am eager to experiment with the sand blaster in the coming weeks to see if I can tone down the shine a bit. I just unloaded this kiln, so these are just first impressions. Overall, I’d say this is a successful firing for me!

I said I’d start a big sculpture this week in my last blog, but I lied. I instead focused my making hours on more sculptural cups and a goblet. They take forever (I got through an entire season of Doctor Who just making the ones in these pictures) but I’m excited about them and want to get through these smaller works before starting another big one.