The View From Kalamazoo

Here are a few shots I don’t think I’ve gotten up here yet, and what came out of the first salt firing – the kiln is ready to go again, so hopefully I’ll get some more stuff back this week.

A cassarole dish. It was made for someone, and I think I forgot to measure it, but at least I remembered to take a photo.

This was an experiment – I wanted to try and throw a chip/dip tray in one piece. This was the result. Again, I gifted it without measuring. I’m fairly happy with it (I think next time I’ll make a deeper dip bowl, it’s hard to dip large tortilla chips in a shallower vessel) and will likely make more at some point.

This is my first salt class, so I’ve been working at experimenting with surface decoration and trying to work with, not against, the salt. I’ve been working primarily with stoneware, but I’m tempted to muck around with some porcelain – it reacts to the salt differently…almost opalescent.


This small bowl has a glaze liner (and I am very pleased with the liner, it’s an amazing blue, these pictures don’t do it justice) and the surface is just a little cobalt slip and the salt glazing itself. I love the warm brown of the salt and the rustic pitted appearance from the little mini salt explosions when we would salt the kiln. Size 3.25″ tall, 4.75 rim diameter.

Still with the out of round, I do like modifying wheel-thrown forms – this bowl is oval, obviously. Much like the previous piece, but I used white slip and applied it rather thick for texture and to see how it behaves differently. As you can see, the slip has an interesting crackle effect. This was probably in the center of the kiln – as you can see, it has less pitting than the other bowl. Size 3″ tall, 5.75 rim widest.

I put a plate in there to see what would happen – I just swirled some glaze (a different one than I used for the bowls, but I ended up with very similar effects) in the center. Less surface pitting, but that same rustic brown salt glazing on untreated surfaces. Size 10″ diameter.

This one is fascinating – I made this rhenishware-style jug last term, and we pit-fired after bisque, but I don’t know that we let it go long enough because the smoke effects were practically non-existent. So I figured I’d put it in this kiln load to see what the salt would do. I rinsed the inside before I put some matte salt glaze in there (dripping it on the outside a bit for a very rustic feel) as liner. There must have been some residue inside that reacted in really violent ways to the glaze (and possibly to the salting – there was no glaze spillage, this didn’t stick to the kiln shelf!) because the bottom blossomed three-ways. (look closely you can see some of the cracking) The inside looks like melted metal and burnt cheese…damn interesting.

I wanted to make a vase, a tall (well, tall for me) vase. I did a lot of finger texturing because salt loves texture, applied the bottom separately because I wanted a really present bottom edge with a grounded feel, and used the same glaze for the liner as for the bowls. Size 12″ tall, 3.5 rim diameter.

I’ve put one tile in this next salt load, but decided just to put what I had not yet glazed into a regular high-fire load. I had two develop a strange crack on one edge (the tenmoku developed it on the bottom, the dunham blue along the left side)..no glaze movement, nothing there before I glazed. I don’t know where they were in the kiln. I suspect the temp was brought up too quickly, but that’s just guessing.They are sturdy and functional … can’t sell them, but I imagine they’ll find homes and behave in appropriate trivet or wall-decorative form with just a little more personality than the others. Aneebodee need a tile?

These next two I experimented with staining (two different tones of green) under a very transluscent celedon.

All tiles are 8.5″ X 8.5″. And, clearly, I continue to be vexed by shooting shots of these tiles with their shiny glaze picking up the light in strange ways and all. But you get the gist of their appearance, at least. You do need to see the knotwork in person to appreciate it, I simply can’t get these photos to show the detail.