Here’s what I programmed in the kiln controller for another round of torture tests, and yes, it’s a form of torture to open a kiln lid, look inside and see your work ruined: Segment / Temp rise per hour/ Temp in degrees  F -60 to 200 (hold for 6 hours) -80 to 280 -100 to 550 -80 to 750 -150 to 1100 -180 to 1700 -80 to 2060 Hold: 10 minutes That make it about a 24 hour firing plus the cooling down.

I fired four of the little hand pressed lions blocks, a cherub plaque and the single section Art Deco in the kiln, and amazingly when I opened the lid, four little shattered lion faces stared up accusingly at me from the bottom shelf of the kiln. I figured at first maybe the vent is cooling the kiln too rapidly but these were not cracks they were blown up under pressure from steam forming inside the clay. Despite being dry I thought, and sitting them in front of two box fans set on high for three days they apparantly were not really dry. I looked at what makes up the “Slow…

These have not been fired in the kiln yet, but I couldn’t resist setting them up for a good photo since the light was so perfect.

I had a really odd dream this morning, what I remember is discovering my office type desk chair rolled very easily on the street in NYC and at first I was with someone else messing around with rolling on our chairs at night, but I soon found a steep street and went down the hill by myself and it was getting very steep and I was picking up speed fast on the chair. Soon I was coasting down at a steady spead about 30 mph and the downward incline continued for miles, I just laid back in the chair, took my shoes off and was enjoying the crusing but quickly…

The mold is finished for this little lion block and the first hand-pressed terracotta is awaiting firming up before I can take it out in a couple of hours. The little lion looks like this in the cast-stone version I’ve had for many years as a wall plaque, but now with the addition of the block he originally had, it will make a nice bookend.        

I  gave quite a bit of thought as to how to provision these to mount on the wall and make it simple for clients to do so, unlike the cast stone you can’t embed steel in the clay for a hook, so I came up with a way to slide the heavy wire I use through two attached studs through a premade horizontal hole made in both in the moist clay. The screw slid through shows how it would work, and the hole where the wire is slid through can be filled locking the wire in place since it can’t slide out the other side: Meanwhile, I am boiling the…

The hand pressed terracotta sculpture turned out well from the kiln, he is on the right compared to the cast-stone version, clear to see how much the clay shrinks, about one inch Now I pressed another one:  

Today after drying over the last ten days, and since yesterday in front of a fan on high, I put the cherub in the kiln on the Bartlett “slow bisque” program, but added two hours of preheat time which it will do via a 60 degree F ramp per hour to 200 degrees and then hold it there for two hours before continuing to ^1, which is 2079 degrees, then it has a ten minute hold before shutting off. I’m guessing it will be around 6 AM in the morning before it shuts off, and probably it won’t be before 6 PM tomorrow evening before I can remove him from…

A simply stunning work of art found at the Charles Luck building, 1111 34th St NW, Washington, DC, the larger version and additional photos of the pair of terracotta horse heads can be found here: LINK I strongly suspect these original pieces were largely hand sculpted, for the simple reason that they installed only one of these per stable building over the doorway. Obviously  these  types of terracotta pieces were made in a mold, but I am certain the ears were pressed separately in another mold and attached later while both the ears and the head were pliable. That would totally eliminate a lot of issues with fragility of the…