For the Love of Ceramics

There is no greater feeling of acomplishment than when you start with a mound of dirt and create something beautiful with your own two hands.  I absolutely love opening up a kiln and seeing all my pots finished and feeling the heat on my face on a chilly Fall night. The picture above is of the loaded kiln just before the door closed for the firing process. I so far, only use a gas kiln for my work because wood kilns are frowned upon in my area, but someday............ So back to the firing, this was my first kiln that I was able to totally fire by myself and I love the results!  I was worried because almost every piece was glazed with one of 17 new test glazes and I had no idea how they would come out.  As I soon found out, I had nothing to fear as everything looked wonderful!  I now have some work ahead of me to narrow them down to the glazes I want to keep.  Below are some examples of the pots that came out of this kiln. The first four are test glazed pots that are around 3-5 inch diameter while the last one is an oxide wash on a thirteen inch diameter pot.