Keramikworkshop - Ceramicworkshop

So this week I participated in a ceramics workshop. Those of you who know me well, know that I haven't really played with clay since middel school, so it was very interesting to see how it would go.

Our instructor were a woman called Katrin who were visiting Greenland for the first time. She lives in Island and in Reykjavik she has a ceramic cooperative with eight other ceramists called Kaolin Keramik Galleri. She is very talented and skilled in the art of smokefireing.

The goal for the ceramics workshop wasn't to make ordinary clay work with glazing but instead to work with the ancient glazing method called Terra Sigallata which consists og different types of clay each mixed with water and a deflocculent, which gave a thin clay based paint which we used to paint our pieces.

The first two days of the workshop we created the pieces which we one day three painted on, with the Terra. I created two small pots, a small plate, a little round container and two mushrooms.

This weekend came the most exciting part - The smokefireing. The pieces wasn't going through a traditional burning proces in and classical oven. Instead it was going to be burned in a open fire. However before we could do that we had to pack it in paper with all sorts of things which would help create smoke patterns and colour on the ceramics. We used everything from copperwire, to dried flowers, dried squids and coffee grounds to seagull feathers and feet.. yes seagull feet. Some pieces were painted with different salt solutions and some we gave different kinds of powdered chemicals before wrapping it and putting the in the pits.

Some of the pieces went in to the ironpit fire which made it totally black, other pieces went into the barelpit which made it colourful in utterly unique patterns and yet som went into the BBQ as an experiment.

Here ares some of the results

From the barrelpit

From the Ironpit

Needles to say the results are stunning and each piece is completely unique i the way the contents in the paper wrappings were chosen, the use of chemicals and how they were placed in the fire.
It was like christmas morning when opening the pits today and we were not disappointed at all.

Here are some of my work

I really enjoyed participating in this workshop and expanding my skills in this direction. I have met so many nice people and gained a friend or two along the way. I will for sure be visiting Katrins Coorperative when we decide to visit Island sometime in the years to come.

For now I have signed up for the traditional ceramics class which will start in a month or so. The ceramic workshop has really been an inspiration and I can't wait to expand my knowledge further in this area and learn the more traditional methods and the classic glazing.

All in all a wonderful week <3

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Just a little glimps of the process along the way..