godwits

firing the kiln today.
I lit one burner at 9.30 last night, and with a rather wakeful night and 2 trips up the garden, one involving climbing on the shed roof to open up and insert the chimney at 2.30 am, by 6.30 this morning it was at 1000C. a very good result for lack of sleep and some wonderful star-filled skies to stare at while sitting on the shed roof. I took this one up to cone 11 again (anything between 1250 and 1315C, depending on speed of firing. The slower the firing the lower the temperature required to flux the cone and make it bend, and thus to melt the glazes). it finished at 8.30pm tonight.

the biscuit firing to 1150C shrank the 3 big pots just enough, and they are in the front part of the kiln. the really big one with the horizontal scoring was very heavy; it didn’t do my back much good shifting it in and out of the kiln and glazing it. The porcelain coating lost some porosity, so that pot didn’t take the glaze so well, but I only needed a thin coating of the barium glaze anyway, and they all three can stand up in the kiln, within a limited section where the roof arch will allow. I also have some re-fires in, the three porcelain wrapped pots which I fired without glaze last time. The glaze ran off them, as they were definitely non-porous, but it has left a good pattern of trickle runs all over them, so I think they will work out quite well. the crank without porcelain on it fired to 1150C took up the glaze perfectly well.
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the firing took longer, 2 hours, in fact, to get cone 11 over, than last time, but the cones were behind the very big pot. so I think I will find the rest of the pots got a higher temperature than last time. I hope my wood ash glaze hasn’t suffered, but perhaps I should not have put it next to the burner. now its done of course I can think of better ways to have packed it.

we escaped for a short walk this morning and came back through the sheep pasture. it’s empty now, the sheep had taken all the grass they could off it by early December, and its a good short cut, but I am careful not to use it very often; the permission to walk in there came with a caveat – not on a regular basis, please. in fact there was a very good reason not to disturb this meadow, I found today. as Tilda did her big sweep, two birds flew up, making an unfamiliar sound. I think they were Bar-tailed Godwits, a pale grey (in winter plumage) long beaked bird a little like a snipe, with a distinctive shrill nasal call. it nests on tundra and bogs in the northernmost Scandinavian and Russian taiga, and the bulk of them winter in Mauretania, but large numbers also winter in Western Europe, including the eastern coasts of the UK, which is us. it winters on flat tidal mudflats and sandy shore, but also on drier grassland.

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if I am right, its quite a sighting. they are on the RSPB’s amber endangered list. they eat snails, insects and worms, which they would find quite easily in the permanent pasture here. But they are mostly found on the coast. we are only 5 miles inland, so it must be a possibility.

3 Comments

  1. What Laura said.

    Also, the whole kiln process is so involved, I admire your commitment and ability to let nature (fire) morph your efforts and expectations in surprising ways.

  2. well, we will see when I open it tomorrow how well I did! it always seems to be by guess and by God.

    yes, I wonder where the name godwit comes from …

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