A Horse with no Mane

Keturah convinced me to throw some pots so we could do a horse hair firing.  So I threw a few 1 and 2 pound forms, it ended up being about 50 or so pots, 25 of each weight. 

Here are a few of the 2 pounders.

 

After I trimmed them I allowed them to get bone dry, and then rubbed them down with some steel wool to smooth out the rough edges.  I then rubbed them down one at a time with vegetable oil, and then burnished them with the back end of a spoon.  Here are a couple of pictures of the burnishing one static and one action shot.

 

Here’s a group shot of the first batch freshly burnished, you can see our kitchen light reflecting off of the surface of the pots.

 

Here’s a close up of one of the vases.

I then loaded the kiln to the brim with the pots, and fired the kiln up to around cone 010 (1657 f, 902 c), and then let it cool down to about 1100 f.  We then set up a station on the other kiln with a lazy susan, some kiln shelves, and a piece of fire blanket.  After the kiln reached 1100 f we began to take the pots out one by one and lay the horse hair on them, and allowed the hair burn and sizzle on the surface.

  

Here are a few photos of the hair being burned on the surface of the pots.

  

A group shot soon after we finished the last one.

  

A group shot of the pots after we washed them off.

  

After the pots dried we took some wax and polished the burnished surface to bring back some of the shine lost during the firing.  It ended up being about 23 pots that we finished this time around.

Here are a few shots of individual pots, look for these on our Etsy site in a couple of weeks.