Post 13 Back at it

Just as I got the blog up and running I went off on a little trip for a few weeks and have been feeling like I've broken the first rule of blogging, not having posted anything for weeks.

A little European cultural immersion however has been inspirational on a number of levels. And just for fun, to that end here is a wonderful 17th C Italian majolica plate from the Sevres Ceramics Museum in Paris, a beautiful piece.

I'm a bit of a gardener as well as a pottery enthusiast, or as the front door mat says, ' a normal person and a gardener live here'. One of my plant interests, yes there are others!, is the hybridisation of Echinacea - the North American native species and much used garden perennial. To cut a long story short there are a number of species, of Pink, White and Yellow flowers. Interbreeding and persistence can yield other colours. Here's one that came out while I was away - a nice pastel.

 But yes back to Bonsai pots. The kiln has been loaded up and ready to go for 5 weeks and so today it was fired up - another 3 pots and about 100 test tiles. I need to run another series of glaze tests to get some more useful results that work the way I want in my kiln with the materials readily available here; hence the test tiles. The next series will be run asap.

 Here it is ready to go before flicking the switch this morning. The other work front is ongoing pot design improvement. I've devised a different foot design for the rectangular pots and the following picture shows the foot pattern form shaped up in plasticine ready to make the plaster casts. The pattern feet have a few imperfections, if you look closely, but it will be easier to resolve these in the moulds after casting.

To make the plaster cast it is simply a matter of building a dam around the pattern feet and pouring in the plaster of paris. This job will get done soon so they can be used on the next pots made.

This is the  style I'm aiming to move to - one with an apparently slightly exaggerated foot to pot height ratio. Watch this space.
 
This firing will give me a total of 7 pots in bisque so I'm really looking forward to getting the next glaze trials done to make a selection and take the 7 through to their glaze firing.