The last couple of weeks have been consumed with decorating and glazing all of the bisqueware that I've been filling the studio with. I've also been helping Helen with the mammoth job of glazing all of the slipware that we picked up from Katie and Lauren. So it's been quite a hot week in the studio!
We tend to set off the kiln at around between 4-6 in the evening which means that the kiln is ready to open after about 2pm the next day. This always makes for a steamy and tantalising day of open windows and obsessive checking of the temperature gauge to see if we've reached the required 200 degrees to be able to open it up.
As we've been doing a lot of mass glazing of slip cast pieces we've been trying to speed up the process by allowing the glaze to dry overnight. This makes the glaze lovely and soft and much easier to touch up. However our tiny studio is already groaning under the weight of all of our pots so having boards of glazed things hanging around steals precious space.
I have one final bisque fire to do now, which will include a large jug which I'm praying doesn't crack - here it is just thrown
The freshly thrown body of my jug
I've also made some little water beakers but I fear they may be too small.
The probably too small water beakers, straight from the wheel.
All of the other preparations for Ceramic Art York and Ceramics in the City are coming together, just a few final admin bits to complete this week.
I got some lovely press last week too.