Bubblicious

You never know how things are going to turn out.
Yesterday, after I loaded some mugs to see if the tiny bubbles would smooth out I forgot to put a cone in the sitter.


So when I tried to place a cone in the sitter I noticed the sitter would not fully raise to accept the new cone. I tried bending it with my hands...then i tried bending it with some pliers. Just when I thought I had "fixed" it the sitter broke. Oops!
Luckily I have several old kilns in the shop and pulled another sitter off of one. It fit perfectly.
I fired the kiln slowly overnight and just it was ready to open after dinner the next day, just in time for a cup of coffee.
When I peeked in the kiln the bubbles had smoothed out and my cups and bowls were saved!
Here are a few of my mugs from the firing.


The clay body is Highwater's Loafers Glory with a Malcolm Davis shino glaze. I also spray my secret bbq recipe of hickory ashes and oxides over the shino for taste. These cups were fired in an electric kiln to cone 10 in total oxidation.

tree jewelry

tree jewelry
Originally uploaded by mitchkimball.com

House in Paducah, KY

working in the studio

working in the studio
Originally uploaded by mitchkimball.com

Welcome to the TBFP Blog

Good evening and welcome to my blog!

Thanks to school being closed today due to inclement weather, I thought this would be a good time to start blogging. It was fun getting out to see Paducah in all it's winter wonderment, but I have kilns to fire before I sleep. I kept wanting to take full advantage of the day off and create Calvin and Hobbes snowmen, but it mainly sleeted and the ground was hard packed ice. So, enough procrastinating...to the shop!

Last night I glazed and fired a kiln load of ash glazed shino pots for Christmas gifts and I am eager to see the results. Currently, I am participating in a community based art project entitled "Ripple" started by our first artist in residence at the A.I.R. studio, Corinne Spielewoy. Hopefully, I will have some good results to apply to my piece for the exhibit.

I have been working with ash glazes for a long time now and still come across a problem or two but the problems usually work themselves out. This is my personal mantra as well. Here lately I have had a few bubbles blister the surface of some pots and they are distracting and considered flaws in functional works. After doing a little research, I have found several solutions to this problem. One would be to bisque my work a bit higher to cone 04 instead of 06. Another possible solutions would be to soak the kiln at cone 10 or to check kiln temp to see if I am over firing the glaze. But really, do you need to know all of this?

Anyway, this blog will be about my ceramic experiments and the many inspirations that keep me creating works of art.

Bye for now.