Post 41 Flowers make you feel good

They do don't they. Keats certainly got it right about a thing of beauty being a joy forever. There's nothing like the sight and perfume of flowers to lift your spirits and put a smile on your face.

It's clivia season here at the moment. This wonderful species which comes from Southern Africa has been intenesively hybridised for years and is now available in a variety of hues well beyond the original orange red. They are fantastic plants needing not much more water than rainfall and they thrive anywhere out of full sunshine.

This one is a SA hybrid that I grew from seed. It has beautiful salmon tones but unfortunately no perfume. The pot is a nice hand painted majolica.

And this is a Chinese hybrid. The Chinese specialise in variagation and small compact plants which can be grow indoor all the time. This one only has a small amount of variagation but is an attractive plant with a nice well presented head of flowers.

Post 40 New page, new design

Getting to my 40th Post seemed to be a good milestone to smarten up the blog design. Previously the page font just didn't go with the background and at times it was a little hard to read. I trust you find it a little easier on the eye now.

And with the new design, a new page to go with the Home page and Gallery. It's tabbed as Creative Foundations and is a little reflective musing about aesthetics, craftsmanship, the challenges and practicalities of potting, as well as a little about pot selection.

I fired the kiln today and so now have 8 pots waiting for glazing. Its about to get interesting again.

Post 39 New pots drying

Today I have some new pots that have been drying for a couple of weeks and are just about ready to bisque.

The first is another of the oval I’ve made before but with a boat like fine clinker finish. It’s 440 x 320 x 90. 

 

The second is a cut down rimless version of an earlier model with more compact feet. The result is a pretty attractive tub with nice proportions. Dimensions at this point are 390 x 290 x 75.

And the last one is from a new mould, with a minimalist contemporary look and integrated foot. It’s 370 x 260 x 83.

Speaking about boats I’m thinking about Japanese boat names to label my pots. There are a number of traditional inshore fishing vessels that would be good candidates. Here’s a picture of a taraibune which would be a good name for a rimless oval!

These pots and one other are in the kiln and ready to go but just need a little longer to be thoroughly ‘warm’ dry. I’ve also got a number of test bars in there which have an assortment of additives to eventually test for deformation at maturity temperature. I made a couple of new ones up this week with additions of different types of sand.

From quite early on I cut the size of the shelves down. This was after doing a cone test on each shelf during a firing. With the shelves extending closer to the walls there was a quite large temperature differential from top to bottom which does not exist with them the size they now are. The pots can happily overhang the shelves as needed.

 

After this firing I’ll have a bit of a backlog of pots to glaze fire. I’ve got a few more little tweaks I want to test first and have bought a new small test kiln for glaze development. It’s due in a couple of weeks. With a smaller kiln I will be able to run more cycles of development without having to be limited in frequency by feeling the need to fill up the larger kiln.