Where beads begin

When I decided I wanted to try making beads, I enrolled in a pottery class at the Wichita Center for the Arts.  It was familiar territory - I'd thrown pots there in the late 80's and early 90's.  Arthritis started taking over, though, and eventually I could no longer lean over a wheel for a couple of hours at a time - my back was just not having that kind of thing anymore.

Sadly, I put my toolbox in the garage, hoping there'd be an opportunity to use my tools again.  Then I became interested in jewelry, and before long, I started thinking about making ceramic beads.

I first started working with a rough brown clay called Death Valley.  It has a high iron content, and under certain kiln conditions, the iron moves to the surface and brings a nice color to the clay - anywhere from a toasty, rusty brown to a gorgeous purplish brown.  The beads are formed, and then allowed to dry to a stage potters call "bone dry" - when all the water that's going to leave the clay by evaporation at room temperature, has gone, and the piece is extremely brittle.  At that point, I load my beads and pendants into my Ugly Little Bead Bowls (ULBB's) - shallow pinch pots that I made in a hurry and didn't bother to do a thing to make them anything beyond functional.  The ULBB's are used again and again, but somehow I never seem to have enough of them.

Bone-dry pendants waiting in ULBB's for their first firing

The first firing is called a bisque - or biscuit - firing, depending on who's doing the talking.  It removes all of the molecular water, leaves a porous surface, and stiffens the piece enough that it can be handled gently without breaking.  This firing, in the WCFTA studio and in my kilns at home, is around 1900 degrees or so.  And in both studios, this first firing is done in electric kilns.

Then the piece is glazed -- usually -- and submitted for a second firing at over 2300 degrees.  In that firing, some particles in the clay fuse, or vitrify; the clay loses its porosity and becomes very strong.  The glaze, which is essentially liquid colored glass, melts and if things go as planned, becomes a lovely color that doesn't run off the pot and glue the piece to the kiln shelf.  

Glazed wavy discs and unglazed pendants waiting for their second firing

When firing beads, they have to be suspended on wires so that the glaze on them touches nothing, because they'll become permanently fused to anything they come into contact with while the glaze is melted.  In this picture, you see some wavy discs on wires, and some unglazed pendants flat on their backs. (More about those, another time.)

The kiln at WCFTA is a large kiln that uses natural gas for fuel.  It's about 6 feet tall and sits under a large ventillation system that pulls heat away from the kiln, and also sends any gasses from the melting glaze, into the air outside where they can dissipate in the abundant and unrelenting Kansas wind.

Empty kiln with door open

Firing!

The entire firing process for this kiln is about a couple of days, because it has to cool very slowly.  One blast of cool air on an extremely hot piece, and it will almost certainly crack!

This firing process is only one of two processes I do.  I have two kilns at home, which fire to a lower temperature.  More about that next time!

This is what it's all about!