Today I want to share some more memories of my trip to France with you.
The last full day we made a paper kiln and it was a lot of fun.
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| Most of us had prepared a little bowl in the days before so they were dry when Friday came. |
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| We used a grill form an old BBQ as a base. We made a channel underneath to be able to add wood and fuel the fire. On top we constructed a basket in metal wire to hold the ceramics. |
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| We filled the basket with charcoal and the dry clay pieces. |
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| We stacked wood we had collected on our walks around the basket. |
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| We wrapped the wood with cardboard, leaving a hole for a chimney in the top. |
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| Than followed 7 layers of clay slush and newspapers, one layer slush, one layer newspaper and so on. |
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| The finished paper kiln with a cute chimney and holes either side to light the fire and add more wood. |
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| What to do with the left over slush.....slush fight! |
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| Watching the kiln shrink as the fire burns higher and higher, we kept adding wood until is was well alight on all sides. |
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| Well into the night we removed the paper surround, the wood had burned away and all the charcoal is glowing. This is good, we need much heat for long around the pieces. |
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| In the morning we found it like this. Perfect result, only 2 bowls were broken, most likely because there was air trapped in the clay. |
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| These are the ones I made, I had added stripes in copper-oxide and a glaze. For the glaze it had not been hot enough so that came off or it was because the glaze was too old and past it's sell-by-date. |
Well hope you enjoyed our fun day too and maybe it will inspire you to make your own paper kiln.
Indrukwekkeend, die papieroven!!
ReplyDeletehet ziet er naar uit dat het een fantastische week was!
Veel plezier in A'dam dit weekend!
yay! I can see you had great time there!
ReplyDeleteLooks like you had a lot of fun! Is this the same as raku?
ReplyDeleteHi Mari, no with RAKU the pieces are bisque fired first in a normal kiln, than glazed with special RAKU glazed and fired in a normal kiln again. They are taken out at high temp and it's the temp shock that makes the typical RAKU cracks. Than they go into a closed drum with woodshaving so the smoke is sucked into the cracks so they stands out.
ReplyDeleteThis paper kiln is a primitive kiln and a way to fire your ceramics without electricity or gas.