Porcelain Artist Pamela Rodger

Porcelain is a white, hard, smooth, dense clay. Building with porcelain requires careful timing + even drying. But I can use the tricky properties of porcelain to stress + crack it. This leaves organic, crack patterns on the surface. Once the piece of porcelain has soft edges and a drier centre, I use a rolling pin to thin + flatten it. This is the point that the cracks appear. The next stage of drying is crucial. Uneven drying may cause the deeper cracks to split the piece open. That may make it interesting, but not functional. Once the piece is totally dry, it goes into the kiln for the bisque stage. After that, I paint a solution of water and red iron oxide or cobalt + manganese onto the porous clay body. I sponge the excess off, until the mineral deposit remains only in the cracks. Then I apply brush strokes of wax resist onto the textured surface, before glazing + airbrushing the colors on. The piece is fired in a kiln to 2,355 degrees F. The unglazed porcelain areas naturally produce a thin glaze on it, from the silica in the clay body. Use it like any other piece of pottery.

Creative, Hand Made Style In Serving Dishes

PRIMITIVE * PIT FIRE Pottery an outside wood burning fire

PAINTING WITH FIRE * Treasure Bowls * Decorative * Organic

Pit firing is the oldest known method for the firing of pottery. Examples have been dated as early as 29,000–25,000 BCE, while the earliest known kiln dates to around 6000 BCE, and was found at the Yarim Tepe site in modern Iraq. Early humans found that some of the dirt beside their fire pit became hard from the heat. This starts the evolution of their storage jars.

Unfired pots are nestled together in a pit in the ground and are surrounded by combustible materials such as wood, shavings, dried manure, leaves, and sometimes metal oxides and salts to affect the surface of the pots. The top of the pit may be protected with moist clay, shards, larger pieces of wood, or metal baffles. The filled pit is then set on fire and carefully tended until most of the inner fuel has been consumed. At around 1,100 °C (2,010 °F) the maximum temperatures are moderate compared to other techniques used for pottery, and the pottery produced counts as earthenware. After cooling, pots are removed and cleaned; there may be patterns and colours left by ash and salt deposits. Pots may then be waxed and buffed.

Today we don't use this method for our functional pottery. The magic is in how wood flames and earth minerals create rich organic vessels by luck and chance. I don't personally use manure, as a combustible material. I save dry leaves, grass, orange peels etc.

Alberta * Canada Hand Made Arts + Crafts

PRIMITIVE * PIT FIRE Pottery an outside wood burning fire

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