Friday, September 11, 2009

The Truro wood kiln, and a Texas teabowl






Dan Finnegan's been on the Cape for a week, teaching a wood-firing course out at the train kiln in Truro, built and owned by the Truro Center for the Arts at Castle Hill. Dee and I drove out to Truro this morning, at the distant eastern end of Cape Cod, to see the results of the 31-hour firing.
Finnegan will no doubt put a full report on his blog, but since I had the photos today, I thought I'd put a couple of them up for people to see. The train kiln was built a couple of years ago by Donovan Palmquist and a group of students. It sits on what used to be a U.S. Air Force radar installation on the sandy bluffs above the Atlantic Ocean.
We stayed only long enough to see a few pots come out. But what we saw looked like the kiln is doing pretty good work. It also looked like Phoenix and B-Mix clay take the fire and ash very well in this kiln.
I'll attach a few photos of the Truro opening - including Finnegan checking out a coil-built teapot by Jim Irvine and talking with Shelley Fenily about one of her pots just pulled from the chamber. I'll also attach a photo of a lovely little blue ash-glazed and crackle-slipped teabowl that arrived in the mail a couple of days ago from Brandon Phillips in Texas. We're trading teabowls, and a temmoku pot is headed his way right now. Thanks, Brandon, it's a very nice pot. The crackle works great with the ash glaze. It's already held my coffee for my last kiln-opening and Dee drank V-8 from it this morning.

6 comments:

Hannah said...

That beardy man he gets every where.
That kiln shed! I am envious!!!

Hollis Engley said...

He does get around, Hannah. And that is indeed a fine kiln shed. A couple of walls and windows and it would be a fine house ...

brandon phillips said...

thanks for the plug...can't wait to get my hands on that teabowl...

Hollis Engley said...

It's on its way, Brandon.

cindy shake said...

The Blue ash glaze is beautiful! I thought I had read in one of Brandon's(?) posts that he was not a big fan of blue glazes... :o) What a lovely piece. I love blues.

Hollis Engley said...

Hi, Cindy. I think he might have said something like I always say, "I'm trying to find a blue glaze I can live with." I mixed up his very light blue ash glaze and liked it a lot. It works well with crackle slips, too, as you can see on that teabowl. It's only one-tenth of one percent cobalt carb, so it's a pretty delicate measurement.