Well, this is a bit of a sad tale. I have unpacked my latest kiln firing, only to find that 2 of my very expensive Japanese Silicon carbide kiln shelves had snapped during the firing and collapsed onto the work below.

Not a pretty sight.

Even though we lost 3 shelves worth of pots crushed or stuck together. There were still some very nice pieces to keep our spirits up.

The bottom shelf was OK.

Despite the disaster, there were still a lot of lovely pots that came out.

The collapse seems to have diverted the flame path a little, causing some parts of the setting to get hotter than usual. This resulted in some over-firing and running of the glazes.

When the pale celadon glaze runs, it forms a very nice emerald green pool in the bottom of the pots. I really like the whiteness of the sericite body, contrasting with the emerald green pool and the pale hazey grey of the carbon inclusion on the rim.

I get out my quality control hammer and start to process some of the sub-prime pieces. They go into the ball mill, where they are polished for a few hours. When they come out, they are used as hand made celadon porcelain gravel ‘jewels’ for the driveway and paths.

This is one of the over-fired bowls below. The glaze has started to run, but it is still really beautiful. The runs have a build up of fine white ash glaze crystals. The pot has remained startlingly white, even with the wood ash attack. The glaze stopped just short of sticking to to the kiln shelf. What I find amazing, is that the sericite is so translucent at this higher temperature, that I can not only see light through it, but I can see the runs of glaze on the out side of the pot from the inside!

This doesn’t happen very often. It also has a beautiful, intense, emerald-green pool of celadon inside the base.

Its a really unique piece. You can even see the pink colour of my little finger holding the base of the pot on the other side, underneath. That is translucency! I’ll probably show it at Kerrie Lowe Gallery in November/December, in her Xmas exhibition.

I have kept one really translucent, but damaged bowl on the window sill in front of my wheel for inspiration. It’s ruined, the rim was destroyed when the kiln shelf on top fell on it and it is warped out of shape from the pyro-plastic deformation at the high temperature of 1300oC. Luckily, I was able to prize it off the bottom of the kiln shelf in one piece. It is so white and translucent, it’s an inspiration to me to see what is possible with this special ground up rock style of clay body called sericite.

I try not to think of the hours I spent working on it, turning and trimming it over several days, in various sessions, until I got it down to an even 2mm thick to get this result.