As mentioned in my past blog posts, I have been waiting for the reveal of my pieces I made over the summer at Peter’s Valley. Well the glaze kiln was finally cracked open, and I made out pretty well! I had a 70% survival rate… 3 out of my 10 pieces cracked during the glaze firing. Usually pieces don’t just crack in the glaze kiln, so my pieces likely had small minuscule cracks prior to the glaze firing  that I couldn’t see, and they just worsened in the high temperatures. The reason for these cracks is likely due to the rushed bisque fires they did at Peter’s Valley, because we only had two or so days in order to make pieces and dry them before they needed to go in the kiln.

I was over all happy with how the glazes turned out on my pieces. I used a combination of Gads Green and Rhodes Copper (glaze names) in order to get the green and red on my pots. That’s one combination that has been fairly reliable for me. On two of my mugs I used Leach White, one of my mugs I used Angel Eyes and lastly two were done in Rhodes Copper. I’m kind of disappointed that three of my pieces didn’t make it. These included a large, lidded serving dish (there were two that I fired), a bowl, and a tall jar. Unfortunately that’s what you get with ceramics though. An important lesson that I’ve learned throughout the process is that you can never become too attached to your pieces, because it’s always possible it won’t make it through the whole process.