I fired a kiln full of pots last week in the soda kiln. It was chock full of cups, but that’s the subject of another blog post. It was a pretty fun load. There were a couple of new clay bodies, new glazes and slips. Lots of testing and playing around led to many late late nights at the studio in preparation for this kiln. I ended up with was about a kiln and a half full of work, so there will be another one soon!

This is what the back of the kiln looked like before the firing:

And this is what it looked like after:

The back third of the kiln is usually has less soda than the front. I load porcelain or white stoneware clay bodies in the back of the kiln that do nice things with less soda to take advantage of this area. If I try to put my soda body in the back of the kiln it will be rough and dry. Not a nice look. I also load the kiln more loosely to encourage the flame to head back there. 

And this is the front of the kiln before:

And this is it after:

The kiln had mixed results for me. The pieces that I’m excited about I am really excited about. The ones that did not turn out so well are disappointments. But that is why I do soda. I’d much rather have the highs be really high and the lows be really low than to fire a kiln and say “oh, that’s just how I thought they’d turn out.” And when you have a kiln that you’re doing lots of experimenting with, those extremes are even more extreme. There will be lots of pictures to come, but I thought I’d give you a peak and some of the cups.

Please excuse my less than excellent pictures. I snapped them quickly in my studio last night as the sun was going down. Snazzy pictures will come in the not too distant future. I want to get better images of the test pieces so you can really see what’s going on.

You might remember these masked mugs:

And perhaps you remember these too:

peace – hope – change 

And this is a little preview of some new pieces to come:

(I love this new clay body!)