A One-of-a-Kind Project

It has been a few years since I did a pottery or ceramic project. There is an amazing gifted woman who visits our resort every Friday bringing all manner of bisque pieces for us to buy and create interesting and one-of-a kind art work. I am always too busy to participate in January & February. But in March, I look forward to Fridays with Musette. In the past I have completed a horsehair piece and a raku piece.

On her list of projects this year was saggar. Not knowing what it was, but ready to try something different, I went over on Friday morning, selected a vase and waited for instruction. She had several examples of saggar and I selected the one I hoped my vase would look like when I was done. It was the process I used to get to my finished product that was so interesting.

"Saggar firing was originally developed to protect wares from ash-slagging and flame-flashing in wood firings, but in contemporary use, with clean-burning gas firings, the process is used in exactly the opposite way: to contain fumes around a pot so that the pot picks up color from the fumes. Saggars are the lidded containers used to contain and isolate pots during a saggar firing. Most often, saggars are made from coarse sculpture clays that can withstand repeated heating and cooling. But some potters make aluminum foil saggars that do the trick quite nicely. "

First I used varying widths of tape to create areas on my vase. Then I painted parts of my vase with ferric chloride, which is very toxic. The ferric chloride gives the piece an orange color. Then I applied a medium dark mixture to some of the blank areas. The medium dark mixture contained something mixed with Miracle Gro. Yep...Miracle Gro. I think there were bits of paper in the mixture also. In the rest of the blank areas, I applied a darker mixture containing sawdust and other things.

Once all areas were 'painted' I broke and stirred two eggs (shells, yolks and whites) in a plastic container and poured them onto two sheets of large heavy duty aluminum foil. Musettte sprinkled some rock salt (to make home-made ice cream) on the top of the eggs. I was then instructed to lay my vase on the eggs and gently scoop up the scrambled eggs and salt onto the top of the vase. Then I tightly wrapped the foil around my vase and was told to come back at 3:00. I did.

Isn't it cool? You can see the thin and thick tape lines, the two shades of dark, and the ferric chloride turned perfect orange/terra cotta. You can see the effects of the egg shells and rock salt. I learned through research different artists use different items and mixtures on their pottery pieces for saggar firing. All of the components burned away during the firing, including the aluminum foil. When I came to pick it up, it was cleaned and sprayed to the finish I had wanted.

I am so pleased with this project. It is definitely a one-of-a-kind piece. It will look perfect next to the other one-of-a-kind vases on the shelf above the door. For now, it is on the shelf next to another one-of-a-kind, our Willa pictures!