Ceramicists are hot

I spent all yesterday helping my mum (and others doing the course) with the wood kiln salt-firing at TAFE, which was cool hot like only a brick kiln getting to 1300^oC through the power of heaps of burning wood can be, but I came home thinking "lj post now!" and...fell asleep. Tiring day is tiring.

( The kiln )

It *was* neat, though - towards the end (after they started throwing salt packages in with each stoke) they pulled out some draw tiles to see how the salt glaze was coming along. The tubes came out glowing, literally red-hot, got dunked in a bucket of water, and this emerged:

( The draw tiles )

Salt glazes are one of my favourite surface treatments in ceramics - you can't really control them, since it's all from the fumes and the fire rather than painting a glaze on beforehand, so every piece is a bit of potluck (boom boom).

Also someone called the fire brigade on us, which was droll because
1/ the kiln had been going since 8am
2/ it was now 4pm
(3/ the smoke was a lot harder to see now it had salt fumes in it)

Fun times.