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Wednesday, April 29, 2009

New Zealand salt glazed storage jar


Here's a large (over 20"), salt glazed, storage, jar that we brought back from New Zealand in the eary 80's. It's too large to fit in my ez cube, so I had to take the photo where it sits in the living room.

Yesterday was a day dedicated to in town shopping, picking up signs and tour maps for the TRAC tour. They had my studio location listed on the wrong part of the road which I corrected for them weeks ago, before the new maps were printed, and the new map doesn't have the correction. They sent in the correction but obviously did not check a test printing before giving final OK, so now they'll probably give me a refund on my tour fee.

The movie "Slum Dog Millionaire" arrived from Netflix, so I watched it after dinner. I can see why it won the Academy Award - powerful movie and a wonderful love story. After the movie I got into the studio, covered some pots and cleared one of the ware carts of non pottery items so I'd have a place to put all the raw pots that were on the slab roller, which I need to use today.

It rained overnight so we don't have to do any hand watering this morning. I have so many things to plant right now, that I need to try to find even an hour a day if weather permits, to get these things in the ground. Rain is a possibility every day this week, so planting is going to be iffy to say the least.

I think I may have enough pots now to fill the kiln. The ware cart is filled to the brim. I have a piece of cardboard cut the size of my kiln shelves and when I can fill it 12-14 times I know I have enough pots to fill the kiln.

There are a few pots left to trim and assemble. That, along with rolling out some slabs should be it for the day. I'm hoping to start dipping pots in flashing slip and decorating tomorrow.

Till later,
June

6 comments:

  1. Would that salt glazed jar be by Mirek Smisek? He would have been living a little bit North of Wellington near the coast in the 1980s. He had two large beehive shaped oil fired salt glaze kilns. P.

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  2. That is a beautiful Jar i have never seen that type like that before. I wanted to see SDM but i hardly had the time, but i 'll try to see it next week. What is Flashing slip?? Is it like laquer (sorry for the misspelling).

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  3. Peter, I don't know the name of the maker; but I'll check it in the morning in good light, and see if there are any discernible makers marks or name on the pot.

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  4. Pauline, flashing slip is usually a very thin coating of a mixture of clay and other ceramic raw materials which can supply interesting colors in soda, salt and wood firings.

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  5. Peter, I checked the pot and I don't think it's his unless his pottery was a different name. There seems to be a signature but it's obscured by the heavily salt deposit. I can't read it clearly, but can see by the length of it, that it doesn't appear to be his name.

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  6. The little pot by Mirek Smisek that we have here has a small potter's mark in the shape of a capital M. I don't know if he ever signed his work as well or not. The robust form of your pot reminded me of his work. Anyway, who ever made it, it looks a lovely pot. P.

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