Wood Firing Fail

A few weeks ago I told you about a wood firing that I was invited to at Shorter University.  I promised to show you the results but they are really not very interesting.  That's because they were never loaded into the kiln.

The university is about a 2 hour drive from my house.  It takes a good bit of gas money to get up there.  Doing that twice for no reason, with no pots to sell to pay for the gas, hurts on multiple levels. One of the pieces that was in the bunch was a commission for a very nice customer.  She wants the pot to be wood fired and knows the risks but it sucked to get her hopes up only to report that the piece never made it into the kiln and she may need to wait want months, possibly over a year for my schedule to allow for another wood firing.

The pots are glazed for the wood kiln, not only in the way the glaze is applied but also in the temperature the glaze is made to fire to.  I fire at cone 6, these pots all have cone 10 glazes on them so I'll have to wash them off or just store them somewhere waiting for the next opportunity.  Just like gas money and spare time, storage space around the pottery isn't abundant.

Woodfired Vase

The instructor who failed to get the pots loaded did apologize and the customer was very sweet and understanding, no lives where lost so it's not all bad, just very sad.  Of course we all know that pottery has more than it's fair share of disappointments.

Check out the gallery page - Future Relics Gallery by Lori Buff