I did a ^7 oxidation firing last week and here are the pots.

These 4 pieces are tests. Upper left: the inside is an earthenware slip from Idaho which turned out to be a smooth stony mat, a rusty blush where thin and dark yellow/gold where thicker...makes me want to make some fake rocks! Upper right- a different batch of slip of Idaho earthenware- it's a satin mat. I put streaks of a Gerstley Borate wash on the inside; those are the lighter areas. I see good possibilities for this stuff.

Lower left plate: I managed to collect a little of the material that was bubbling out of a "mud pot" in Lassen Park ...just had to see what would happen when it melted! Well, it didn't...just became flakes that didn't stick to the pot, not even where I brushed some GB wash. Wonder what it is composed of?...something really refractory, for sure.

Lower right plate: I brought home some material from a parking lot in Lassen Park because it looked like ash. I sifted out the larger material and sifted some of the fine stuff on this plate. It melted enough to adhere, but will need a higher temp. to melt. I might add some to a stoneware body, or test it as specks in a glaze.

I'm calling this a paperweight (it's weighty!). I was making an enclosed sphere and it got too soft and started settling down. I guided it into a fairly even shape and spent way too much time carving the double wall. But it was worth doing, and when you hold it to your ear, it sounds like wind on the prairie.I tried a slight change in the handle shape on these cups...flat on top to prevent your thumb from sliding down the curve.

Some pots our grandsons made recently...no, our daughter made the triangular pinch pot.

This is a 15" low bowl which I refired. It was pictured here before, about a year ago, but it was creme in the middle and greyish on the sides, with a fairly sharp transition. The creme was a Touchtone base (like Randy's red with only a little RIO) and the greyish part was where it had Touchtone Red (15% RIO) dipped over the creme. So for this firing I dipped the whole thing in Laguna's cone 5 Italian Straw and you can see it fluxed everything and flowed nicely. The picture below, of the underside shows it's action well too. Good thing I didn't have a thicker coating of the Italian Straw or I would have had too much running.

Another refire: it was a plain yellow tray with copper on the edges, so I used an ear syringe and gussied it up a bit.
I had an order for one of these, so I made two.
These were made by the grandson of a friend as a Scouting project: he needed to make both slab and coil items.
These are 8 and a half inches in diameter; a customer wanted individual snack dishes.

Can anyone identify this insect? It was parked on our bathroom wall. It's wingspan is about half an inch.

Here are some Salsa Sets I made to take to the local Flower Festival Art/Craft show. I've made them for a few years now and they sell well. They are about 6" in diameter.

Below are some earthenware pots I made this summer. Some are sold, others available. Their sizes range from 9 to 12" in diameter.

I guess this will be a conversation piece at my booth at the Flower Festival Arts & Crafts show this weekend! Maybe I'll put a hang tag on it that says "See-it ain't all easy!" You can bet I'll be extra careful attaching handles in the future....although I've never had this happen before, in over 25 years of firing.

The exterior on this mug has a thinned earthenware slip, from some clay my grandsons in Idaho found for me. ..like Albany slip, but lighter in color.

The slip here is Death Valley clay from Laguna; applied thinly, it's brown under my light glaze- thicker application turns a rich purplish blue.

I fired this vase on it's side, with dried glaze bits piled on top. The other side stuck to it's stilts and to the protective clay slab, so I'm thinking of something imaginative to do to the chipped off spots.

This iron red bowl was yuck brown the first time it was fired...better now.

...about 15 inches across, with carving in slip.


The bowl above is 14" in diameter. The Death Valley clay slip was applied when the bowl was leather hard.

The pitcher is a refire; was supposed to be pink with spots! I guess at ^8 the pink burned out. The cup below has Death Valley clay slip with two figures quickly carved into the slip.

These pots below are from a firing the last week in May. Cone 8 oxidation.

A ten inch plate. I think this is a sweet blue, from copper carb. Usually copper will go greener, but with this particular glaze, I'm getting a light blue.
This bowl is 10x4. See the chatter marks?
...just a tumbler, with a wash at the rim (same as the one described below the yellow bowl)
An 11" dish, about 1 and a half inch in height.

A nine inch bowl. The whitish areas are a wash (Gerstley Borate, rutile, titanium) I applied streaks of it over the yellow glaze thinking to alter the copper stripe.
This is actually a small bowl, about 8 inches in diameter.
This is a pizza stone requested by a friend, and the sandwich plates complete the dinnerware set shown in previous posts.

These little fortune cookies were in my most recent firing. A few months ago I made a similiar necklace, but with red orange beads, and a friend saw it but wanted turquoise beads. These are "reconstituted turquoise" from Michaels, not expensive.

I did a glaze firing last Saturday and will post pictures of the pots, below: I like making tumblers of differing shapes. Yes, those are iron spots on the far left one-volcanic ash added to the glaze. There are more inside. I expected more outside too!
This little pot is about 3.5 inches high. The top was dipped in a rutile/titanium wash.
I made these for myself, because I had a need for them, and made extras, of course. I need a catchy name for them...Page weights, Pageminders, Book weights?

The pot on the right was thrown upside down, and a pad of clay added for the bottom. I had some extra bowls in this load for our local "Empty Bowls" event, but didn't get them fired in time.

These go with the set of dishes from an earlier posting (a few ran past the foot in that firing, so these are replacements) Below are dessert dishes for the set-

This is a ten inch baking dish. The glaze is Italian Straw from Laguna. Actually a cone 5 glaze, but it went to cone 7, no problem.

This firing was one of the few where I had cone packs on each shelf. I used 6,7, & 8 cones. The top shelf went to cone 7, and the rest of the kiln went to cone 8 really flat! I have both digital and analog pyrometers. The analog one registers low at the top of the firing, and the digital one went to 1240C, which is only between 6 and 7. But I do hold at the top, so it's heat work, I guess.

I used all the cone packs because I was doing some tests with rice hull ash, replacing the silica in one of my recipes, and wanted exact info on the temp. I reached.