Saturday, December 3, 2011

New pots for holiday inventory






I fired about 100 pots yesterday, turning on the gas at about 9 a.m. and cone 10 falling at the top around 2:30. I know, it was a fast firing. And pretty tightly packed, too, but since I bought new lighter-weight shelves the firings have often been about 6 hours. Even when I try to hold it back a little. But if pots and glazes work, so ...
Anyway, here's a look at some of the new pots, with apologies to those of you who are not in love with copper reds. This glaze works well in this kiln and my friend Kathy Hickey, owner of the Daily Brew coffee shop in nearby Cataumet, likes red. And because she pays me cash every time I deliver mugs to her, I fire a certain number of red pots. All of the mugs in the photo above will go to the Daily Brew tomorrow.
The photos: Three fairly rought vases, two of them squared; a selection of Daily Brew mugs; two roughly squared bottle vases; shallow bowls glazed in Harvard Studio carbon-trap and spattered with iron slip.

10 comments:

Michèle Hastings said...

i wish our little gas kiln fired that quickly with such beautiful results! i am sure you save a ton of money on gas. ours seems to always take 10+ hours, i think we could speed it up a little but i am not the only driver here ;-)

gz said...

It is good to have a customer like that

Tracey Broome said...

As always, beautiful work. Looks like Christmas came early to Hatchville with all the red, very festive!

cookingwithgas said...

no potters were hurt in the firing of those red mugs. They look great and your work is going to be pretty dam* nice for your open house- some how I see light snow, hot drinks and money....

heidi haugen: days with clay said...

nice batch of pots...what kind of reduction schedule/environment do you use for this kiln..how long does it take to cool?
thanks.

Hollis Engley said...

Hello, Heidi. The kiln is an Olympic DD17. In this firing, the burner bars were turned on at 9, burning for an hour with the temp up to around 110 F. Then the six burners on low for one hour, with temp to 856. Up a bit more for another hour, temp rising to 1442. Then to one pound for 20 minutes to 1697, at which point cone 012 is down and body reduction begins. Heavy reduction goes on about 20 minutes, at which point I open the damper a bit, keep a light flame at the peeps and the damper and turn up the gas to 1.5 pounds. Cone 9 is soft at about 2 p.m., temp is 2063. 30 minutes later cone 9 is flat and 10 is bending. Shut down 10 minutes after that, with cone 10 flat at top and 11 bending and cone 10 almost over at the bottom.

Hollis Engley said...

Sorry, I forgot to mention the cooling. I shut down about 2:30 this firing. By midnight, the temp inside was abou 350 F. It was 95 at 7 the next morning.

Dan Finnegan said...

Hollis,
I'm flattered that you would think that I was selling at that show in Demarest...That'll never happen. I was just part of the paying public. I do think that I'd sell a lot of pots if ever I was invited!?

Hollis Engley said...

Oops. Sorry. That was the impression I got and naturally I figured they'd made the right decision to invite you, Daniel.

ang design said...

oh stop it!! gorgeous pots again H...