The Process

New Work

I’ve been creating some new pieces using ferns I collected in the Willamette Valley. I threw some slabs on a sturdy, canvas-covered table and draped one into a bowl form. I then pressed licorice ferns into the clay and pattered the edges with the stem of a sword fern. You may be able to spot the licorice fern spores still clinging to the clay. These will burn out in the bisque firing.

I pressed a sword fern into a long slab and draped it into a sling mold made out of a wooden box, an old shirt and a staple gun. I like the curve of this slab, so I plan to make some more sling molds for the studio.

The Bisque Stage

After the piece is dry, it is slowly fired in the kiln to about 1812ºF. The “bisque” firing burns out carbon and chemically held water in the clay molecules. Bisqued pieces are hard and ready for the next step: glazing.

These two pieces have been bisqued:

After Glazing the Work and Firing the Kiln

This is the exciting part. Was the kiln firing successful? How do the glazes look? It takes about nine hours for the electric kiln to reach cone six (about 2200ºF) and 16 hours to cool. It’s sometimes hard to wait, but it’s (usually) fun to see how the work turned out.

The bowl and the platter successfully made it through the drying stage, the bisque firing, the glazing process and the final glaze firing.