Glaze Firing

I actually glazed and loaded a kiln during fall quarter. The day after Thanksgiving I was able to spray glaze on some pieces and get them into a kiln. I had time to fire, with some help from my husband, on Saturday and was still able to take the work out on Sunday before classes start up again on Monday.

 

The top shelf of the kiln before and after firing.

I glazed in the late afternoon, so it was getting dark and starting to rain when I sprayed the glaze on. It was a bit hard to see if I had the glaze on thick enough, but everything seems to be basically fine now that I've taken it out of the kiln.

Most of the base of a new sculpture

I had several pieces in this kiln that needed to be glaze fired before I could start putting them together. I didn't get all the pieces through this first firing, so I'll have to finish glazing and fire again this month, hopefully this week.

The base and a raised section of a new sculpture

I had three parts of one sculpture, two parts of another, and one part of a third sculpture all in this kiln. In the next kiln I hope to fit a bowl full of smaller pieces. Unfortunately, I need to glaze each one separately and place each one on stilts in the kiln because I plan to glaze all surfaces of these forms.

The top pieces of one or two sculptures

The bottom shelf of Saturday's kiln was loaded with a few pieces to be bisque fired and a few pieces that needed their first layer of underglaze fired. I also fired some kids' stuff in the kiln including a small herd of ponies.

Kids' ponies and a pony friend