The Otter Was Mugged
It’s 4:17 on Friday the 28th and I’m in the glazing area of my studio working on some of the last mugs to be in the Sustainable Craft Fair. I hear the sound of something falling and wonder what it was. I am also ten minutes away from finishing a glaze firing and turning off my kiln. I walk into the kiln area and look around–nothing seems amiss. Then I decide to peek in the kiln and see if the last cone has gone down and I should turn the flame off. Where are the cones? Wait a minute, where is the shelf? Everything is out of place and TILTING! and the shelf has collapsed! WHAT HAPPENED??!! Shit–turn it off! Everything is molten!
So–I turn everything off and close the peek holes like I normally would–just in case something can be saved. I’m stunned…what went wrong? Did I somehow knock a stilt that holds up the shelf when I last checked the temperature? Oh god–there is some of my students’ work in there! What if it’s ruined? There is absolutely nothing I can do right now–just wait and worry for 24 hours until it cools.
So after a restless night’s sleep and an anxious shift at work, I can finally check on things. The kiln is still too hot to open but I get a flashlight and peer into the peek holes and down the flue hole on the top of the kiln. From the top it looks like a train wreck. Both halves of the top shelf have caved in and tipped over to one side of the kiln. The piece of kiln shelf I use to control some of the air flow out of the flue is also tipped on top of things. Mugs and pieces are tumbled together, stuck to each other and to the tilted kiln shelf. Because this happened when the kiln was at it’s hottest and the glaze was molted, the pieces will stick to anything they touch. But on the other hand if anything is salvageable it will have had a full and complete firing. In another hour I can open the kiln fully and see what I find inside.
What a mix of emotions, some pieces I was really looking forward to seeing and they turned out beautifully–but stuck together in a clump of six! Aaagghh! Only four pieces came through unscathed. Most pieces have touched something and at the minimum, have a powdery inclusion and flat spot in their glaze surface.
After unloading everything and putting it to one side, I come to the bottom and see that the supports that hold up the very bottom shelf are what collapsed. One is just a brittle pile, no structure left, no hint of the brick it used to be. Most of the others are deformed and one other has started to give way. So… these insulation bricks are great for withstanding heat but cannot take a weight bearing load at the same time. At least it wasn’t something I did during the firing and I can correct it before the final firing later this week.
All in all this crazy mishap has made some interesting work. Most pieces have scars–little extra parts stolen from their neighbors or the kiln shelves. Some are missing little chunks, but if it’s not on the rim where there will be mouth contact, then the wounds can be smoothed a bit and become part of the history of that piece. Hopefully this load will be one-of-a-kind and this will never happen again! But in a way, these are some of my most special pieces. They wear their history on the outside showing what they’ve been through and survived.
Don’t worry Syd and Alex, your pieces survived too (except the otter)!
