The Slop Barrel
recycled bits of clay information
March 4, 2008
Today is the first day of our 50% off pottery sale. All pottery in the studio is half off and the sale will run through March 15th. If you would like to be notified of our studio events & news, please sign up for our newsletter on our Contact Page.

Michael is busy making new work to send to galleries and for art fairs. The wall tiles are still drying & the ewers that we have been following are waiting to be glazed this week. We hope to post again later in the week with more photos!

March 8, 2008
Yesterday Michael glazed some pieces and loaded a kiln. We snapped some photos of the glazing & the ewers that we have been following. The glaze is applied by dipping, pouring, brushing, and spraying. As you can see from the photos, it looks nothing like the finished product. The glazes mature in the kiln during the firing process to form the finished surface.

The glazes must be mixed properly before applying. Materials in the glazes settle to the bottom (the most important components are the ones that settle), so we have to make sure that we resuspend everything well.

Mixing glaze
After the pieces are glazed, the kiln is loaded using special kiln shelves and furniture. The photo above is of the back of the kiln after it is loaded. The firing itself takes about 12-14 hours and then it takes an additional 24 hours for the kiln to cool before the work can be unloaded.
March 11, 2008
The kiln was unloaded today! The colors turned out especially nice in this firing. The ewers are a little hidden in the back left of the kiln so we shot them separately for you. The ewers look really nice and we only fired a few of them so stay tuned to see how the rest turn out.
The slop barrel is a large bucket in the studio into which we put clay trimmings and scraps. These scraps are reworked back into usable clay to make the next batch of work.
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