I havn’t been doing too much making as we are still in the midst of renovations, the Museum shop had run out of bread bakers so took enough time out from renovations to make some. The pot is as you can see very simple, they have to be conditioned, which is painted with olive oil and flour shaken inside enough to coat it , as it gets used it should get better. As with all ceramic you have to be give not to give it a thermal shock.
My kiln is quite old now and has been moved around a lot in various moves, but it is luckily still working very well, I think the key to a long lasting kiln is to fire low ( not much good if you fire at stoneware temperatures) but the best stoneware is salt or woodfired. Whilst searching through boxes of pots in my stable, I found some bisque fired stoneware pots that i’d overlooked so will be glazing them for the wood firing in October ( maybe ). The kiln took approximately 30 units to fire a long bisque, with solar panels on the roof on a nice sunny day can generate 23 average , equates to one and half days generation. Our energy supplier is one of the green companies so I hope most of the electricity it took to fire the kiln was sustainable.
There are also raku pots ready to be fired at the raku firing on the last Sunday of the open studios . I have been busy getting the glazes ready, some were completely dry after 18 months of storage.
Another step towards normality after being locked up, locked down and locked in. Hope fully we will see a lot of visitors for our first Chichester art trail .
Whitecroft Pottery 