Planter: Medium Marbled Lined Soda

These are a new experiment.  The base is thrown in porcelain then a marbled coil of colored porcelain is pinched and thrown into the piece.  This piece also has two blue slip inlaid lines that melted and ran gorgeously in this perfect soda firing.  Due to the nature of the process no two pieces are alike and none are symmetrical, but your plants won't mind. 

Each soda fired piece is one-of-a-kind as atmospheric firings are unpredictable and can yield stunning results.  Soda firing takes an enormous amount of time, energy, labor and resources and is usually a community effort.  In the soda firing process, soda ash (sodium carbonate) is added to the kiln at cone 9 (2300°) and the sodium vapor combines with silica in clay to form sodium-silicate glaze.  The soda also interacts with the slips and glazes to create swirling unpredictable colors that shift and change around the piece.  The marks on the bottom are from the wadding used to hold the piece up off the kiln shelf so that glaze drips won’t fuse it to the shelf.  They can leave lovely flame marks and are a telltale sign a piece is soda fired, though they don’t always happen, especially in low soda areas of the kiln.