06 September 2014

Smoking

very old metal garbage bin
 I am preparing to submit a small sculpture to the Port Hacking Potters National Competition...

Being winter and a very small fire in a container, I am finishing the piece by smoking it..

The piece was coated with Terrasigilata prior to being bisque fired.

I use clean sawdust, paper and some kindling.

Put the piece in the old garbage bin, light the fire, wait for the sawdust to catch and then place the lid on top.
Lid placed over to reduce the flame

Here is a sneak peak of the result
hand formed with stoneware clay, coated with terrasig and then bisque fired.

8 comments:

Hop'n Frog Pottery said...

yay I love your gorgeous lil' pigs! :-D

Linda Starr said...

can't wait to see another view of the piece

I wonder if I could smoke my horse sculpture I made not too long ago? Do you protect the ears so they don't break or just gingerly set him in the fire?

Have you ever tried sprinkling copper carbonate or used any other ingredients in your smokings?

I have tried that with barrel firings , wonder if the smoking is similar?

smartcat said...

Smoking HOT!!!

Anna said...

Thank you Tanya :) thank you Smartcat :)

Linda I probably could try copper but at that low temperature it would be mostly black and not so interesting. Putting foil over any part would prevent the carbon being absorbed. I need to get a bit more colour in one area and will use foil to cover parts already black enough when I fire again.

Linda Starr said...

I think I got the most color when I fired with hard wood in the barrel and I had used copper scrubbies taped over some pieces and sprinkled copper carbonate over the wood and such but it was quite a while ago I'll have to look back on my blog and see what I did. I have heard of folks smoking pots in BBQ's I think I like your method better.

Anna said...

Hi Linda
Sounds like you would have got to a higher temperature than these of mine. I had a teacher who specialized in 'black' firing and this is a variation on his method. He used tins as saggars in a gas kiln. His name is Walter Auer if you want to google his works.
thanks for your comments.
Anna

Midori said...

A lovely piggy! :D

Anna said...

Hi Midori
Thank you. That one has a few friends around at the moment waiting to see who gets to go to the 'Ball' (exhibition)...