Soda Firing, winter break

I used to soda-fire a bunch of work in undergraduate and over the last couple of months I have been really missing it! In the soda firing process, sodium carbonate is mixed in a water solution and sprayed into the kiln at a maturing temperature, the sodium vapor combines with the silica in the clay to form a sodium-silicate glaze. This process also creates a large amount of variation on the surfaces of the work.

At LSU last spring we tore down our soda Kiln with the intention of building a new one. Since LSU's studio arts building is being renovated next year we are going to wait on the rebuild of the soda kiln. Luckily Jeni has recently become interested in soda firing and they have a soda Kiln at OSU. She wanted to fire a cone 6 soda over Christmas break (I know this post is really late) and I really wanted to cone 10 soda, so as a compromise we were able to do 2 soda firings! And I must admit it was my first ever cone 6 soda firing and although I was at first skeptical, the results were pretty good, we had a few pieces that didn't reach temperature which we re-fired in an electric oxidation cone 6 firing.

Here are some of the results from the Cone 6, unfortunately we don't have any pictures from the cone 10 firing and many of those pots were a little too "juicy" and require lots of grinding. Together as a team we made a set of cups and bowls for my Dad and Stepmom. Jeni threw the bowls and I trimmed, I made the cups, and Jeni did most of the glazing. All of the images down below are from our cone 6 soda-firing. Thanks for visiting! My semester is in full swing and there is lots of work being made and lots of work to make; which means there will be some more posts coming in the near future.

 Forrest.