Firing Log

The second podcast is finally complete and well worth a listen. Settle in for a fascinating discussion after which you may wish to give yourself some quality time with google as well as the links below. Download episode two directly, or through iTunes (mp3, 55mb, 60:00 min).

Image courtesy of Arthur Rosser.

Steve Harrison is a potter from Australia with decades of woodfire experience under his belt, plus an obvious love and ability for the geological sciences as applied to ceramics. To understand the breadth of his experience, take a peek at his CV, or consider that he is currently firing work in a kiln he built himself out of bricks that he made from local materials; the pottery fired in the kiln is made of clay he collects locally, glazed with materials he collects locally, and fired with wood grown locally.

photo gallery of Steve Harrison’s work, bricks, and kilns. Photo courtesy Michael Bradfield.

His work is shown (and available for sale) at the Legge Gallery in Sydney Australia. During the course of the podcast, Steve discusses his current show “Dirty Little Secrets” and how he developed the clay body used to create these examples of black-bodied ware (as well the white porcelain work represented in a prior show “From the Ground Up“). His recent work is influenced by the way “perfection” has been devalued by modern manufacturing techniques. You can read more in an article he wrote entitled: Perfect Is the New Junk (pdf, © Steve Harrison, used here with permission).

Steve’s kiln building/rock glaze books are available directly from him. Additional photos of his studio, kilns, and work can be seen on his Sidestoke page. Lastly after talking with Steve, I had much to google. Here are some of the more interesting things I picked up:

• Steve has an article in Ceramic Review, Issue #222, entitled: From the Ground Up.
• Porcelain Spy: Père d’Entrecolles. Read translations of his actual letters or a summary written by the NBH (Hungarian Spies) entitled: Pioneers of Industrial Espionage. (as an aside, the entire NBH site is rather interesting, even if a bit chilling).
• Porcelain requires Baitunze (also spelled petuntse, petunse, baidunzi, and likely more).
• Picture of “treacherous” bauxite pebbles (scroll down for a picture of a hand full of them).

I think you will find that Steve’s interview, aside from being interesting and entertaining (Steve has a great sense of humor), will foment a storm of ideas. Enjoy.

I’ve been playing around with some gallery software, called plainly enough: gallery. It’s pretty fun but it will take me a while to understand it enough to get it better integrated into my website. Regardless, I’ve uploaded a much expanded photogallery from the last firing.

It does have some quirks. For example, it seems that the comments for each photo are hidden unless you click the little up arrow in the bottom left corner of the screen when looking at the large size photo. Everything else seems fairly self-explanatory with forward and back buttons below the pictures which do as one would expect.

Last thing, I still need to photograph the twice fired piece I mentioned in a comment to the previous 7th firing post. I still plan on doing that … but not today. That will have to wait till after I clean up after yesterday’s windstorm — 82 mph (132 kph) gusts. Sustained winds were 30-40 mph (48 - 72 kph) all day long. It was wild!