Barrel Firing #?

This was the result of the barrel firing yesterday. I have much to share, so I think I'll include a few blog posts.

This one was much different in that we just put the pieces into the barrel and didn't add anything like seaweed, etc. Just sawdust, sawdust, and more sawdust. Jim Whalen has been a recent workshop leader at Clayworks, so my friends wanted to use what they've learned in this barrel firing and also do a firing in prep before the next second part of his workshop. Some had terra sigilata on the (a clay mixture) and others had been burnished. I put one piece in that had simply been bisque fired. It really didn't look like the others. In the pic above it's the whitish one under the orangish one on its side at (about 11 o'clock).

The above picture was taken at about 8 o'clock in the evening, after the flame had died down. The entire barrel firing didn't take much time. We decided to unload the pieces today to make sure everything had cooled.
These are some of the pieces before hitting the barrel.
I heard that including these would bring good color, so I put a few in mine. Sweet gumballs? I forget what they're called.
We put the pieces in two layers. Above is layer #1. My piece is the whitish one with the gumballs in it. A variety of birds and some hearts too. Beautiful colors in this pic.
We used sawdust of different consistencies.. .some really fine sawdust and others that were more coarse.
Here, Becky, Elaine, and Verna? are adding more sawdust to the barrel.

In all this, I've lost track of which numbered barrel firing this is... oh well.

Finally, once the match was lit, the flames spread quite rapidly. Will show the results in the next post. The first pic in this post was taken just before we all left the studio.