Another Kiln Day

Well, another kiln day has come and gone. 

Unfortunately, I overfired a little bit so half the stuff didn't come out as well as I wold have liked.

But, things will be changing in the new year!  I used to produce so little pottery that the goal of each peice was simply survival.  I'm now making stuff fast enough that I can be a bit more picky. 

For a long time, I was firing everything at cone 5 1/2.  Then I moved up to a true cone 6.  With this experiment, I have learned a few things.  Some glazes really like going hotter.  They come out more vibrant and melt better.  Especially the clear and the shinos.  However, some of my prettier glazes run like crazy and some of the color burns out when firing that hot, especially my hyacinth and some dark blues.

So now that I'm producing quite a bit more, I'm going to start separating my glazed ware according to the temp favored by the glaze on the piece rather than just the size and how I can fit the most into each load.

So I'll be taking all sorts of glaze notes from now on and hopefully I'll be losing less items during the glaze firing!