Joseph Fireborn

Made some breakthroughs in my glaze work this week. Finally going to have some stability in the final product which is what I needed to move forward in production quantities for online, future shows and galleries!

Working on a soft blue glaze today to celebrate the gender of my baby on the way. I think I might do some limited edition work in a very soft robins egg blue since that is my favorite mason stain to date. Finally getting some time in the studio again. Life is crazy.

That moment you have been making jars with a gallery and also a lid inner gallery that are so perfect that when you wax them they no longer fit inside of each other... perfection. Then that moment where you realize you forgot to turn on a preheat for your greenware to fire in a glaze firing and remember at 540F before you have a terrible disaster in your kiln and you stop it and vacuum it the next day. Thank you Jesus. 

Going to run some line blends today. I want to matte down my standard white glaze slightly. I want it to be more of a sheen satin and not a solid glossy glaze. Taking a much needed day break from my studies.

How is everyone? It has been a while. Just wanted to check in and say I love and miss you all! Fired my kiln today. First time in 8 months I have even touched a pot. Made me realize how much I miss this community. Hope everyone's pots are great and their glazes are perfection!

Firing the kiln tonight. Extending my firing to 20 hours from 18. I have pretty much settled on my glazes so I am now just trying to fine tune my single firing schedule. I have 4 glazes total and 2 wood ash pastes. All of the glazes are white. How hilarious is that? The last white glaze I added forms a lot of crystallization so I wanted to hold longer at the right temps and I also slowed down my cooling from cone 6 to 1800G at 125F per hour. I am firing two platters that I can barely fit in my kiln, so I am excited that they come out good so I can give them away.

Firing kiln with a bunch of vases with my wood ash glazes and modified slips. Excited to see them tomorrow night.

Just peeked in my kiln full of test tiles with wood ash mixtures, pastes, and soda washes. Some very very promising results. Can't wait for the next 250F to cool so I can open that beast and spend days looking at every inch of every tile! It has been way too long since I have run a kiln load full of tiles. 

We had two nice days in a row here. I cleaned the studio up a good bit today and tomorrow I am going to mix up some ideas I have had brewing for a while: chicken grit, course grog, red sand, white sand(with smallstones) and black ice porcelain into my red rock clay.  Nom Nom Nom. I am going to mix the black ice and red rock at different amounts looking for a dark black reddish body that I can spray with soda ash solution(safely) and then rub wood ash/flux mixture all over it dry. Then fire it on top of seashells! Can it get any more exciting!? I think not! 2018 is going to be a great year. I am only working with 2 glaze bases: Charles Titanium Grid 10 and Milky Gloss. The rest will be ash and soda mixtures. I also won't be glazing the entire pot anymore. Looking for that sheen. My elements are going to hate me, c'est la vie! But I also have to replace my controller tomorrow. Busy day Busy day!

Anything worth doing is worth doing badly at first!

Finally over my cold. I had such plans for this break, but between a family cold, kiln controller dying, and freezing cold garage I haven't gotten much done. However, I am going to accomplish a lot in the new year! Going to continue to work on my surfaces and glaze development. Exciting times.

Enjoying the chilly weather by my warm kiln cooling down while I throw pots in the garage. Couldn't ask for a better day.

Changing elements and TCs. Then doing the element break-in firing while I clean my studio and mix some glaze. FUN DAY! 

Those days when you wake up with tons of plans and do nothing. Bleh. Guess I will just work twice as hard tomorrow.

I am so happy with my work! I never thought I would say that this early in my career. Although I am still testing new glazes and new techniques. The majority of my kiln loads are finally being made to sell. How cool is that! Toot Toot! 

Good Ole Bisque Firing. A large shallow bowl/platter, a few cups and another bowl. Pretty much an empty kiln tbh. I haven't had time to make a lot until today. 20+ mugs drying in my greenhouse. I will handle them tomorrow evening. 

All of it in crackle slip. I think I might have found a better way to do it. 2 of the pieces have this new method and I think the texture looks at lot better.

Firing a new schedule. Needed to shorten mine as it is just too long. So I bisqued my pots before hand to avoid that extra slow ramp. I also changed the slow cool. It is still same total time, but slightly different in temps and ramps. Hopefully it works better or reasonably close because these 17-19 hours firings are just to hard to schedule in.

Cutting down trees from Irma. Mixing slip and some new glazes for highlights. Applying slips. Sunning my cups. Glazing tomorrow. Firing Monday! WOOO! Weee 

Going to start working towards entering a cup show in my state. Called SIP. Based out of Savannah. Fun times.

Firing zeh kiln.

Gotta love when you figure out something that's been baffling you for months. 

For those people who enjoy pottery to the primitive processes:

Guess who is happy with his glaze work finally. <-- This guy! Woo Hooo.

Just signed up for perspectives 2017 workshop with Naoki Izumi! So excited. These workshops are like an hour from my house and so affordable. I don't even know what it is about, but just to hear a master talk for two days will be beyond worth it.

Finished with my summer semester. Finally time to POT!