Saturday, December 07, 2013

The last bonsai pot of 2013


I haven’t been making any new bonsai pots since August and when our wood-firing group decided to have one last firing this year, I had only one small pot made months ago (14 x 6 cm, round). After the firing it turned out to be very unpretentious and I happen to like that in pots (see leftmost image above). This kiln firing was the longest our group had so far. Usually our firings take anywhere between 12 and 17 hours, but this one took 22 hours. I also would like to point out an interesting observation. All three images shown above depict the same rutile glaze, applied on the same buff stoneware clay and fired in the same kiln. The difference is that these three pots were fired in different parts of the kiln and came from three different kiln firing events. The colour range is amazing – from black to beige!

2 comments:

Gary Howell said...

So, the only difference between them is the length of firing and the position in the oven and yet they all come out different colors? That is incredible. that would be something fun to experiment with.

Kigawa said...

It also depends on the types of wood used as fuel, weather conditions and the way the kiln was packed.