Stuck for ideas for Mothers' Day on 7th May?

Why not come and visit out gallery ? Open every weekend on Sat/Sun between 1-4pm.....I've attached some photos of current work available in our gallery.  Love to see you there!

Public Pottery Classes prove popular

Our hand-building pottery classes, held on Tuesday evenings from 7-9pm during school terms continue to be very popular - there's currently a waiting list of over a year. Please email newplymouthpotters@gmail.com for more information.

The Big Experiment

What do you do with an old brick kiln at the back of the clubrooms?  Well New Plymouth Potters Club members recently decided to fire it up to see what happened.  Yes there was a plan.....it was to be an experimental soda firing or it's technical term was an "atmospheric saggar firing".  So we loaded in members pots that had been once fired (bisqued) and placed all sorts of chemical bits and pieces inside, soda, steel wool, copper wire, shells, copper carbonate to name a few.  The plan was that the heat generated from 3 bottles of gas and the chemical reactions would give us some amazing effects on our pots.  We put in an old pyrometer (which is supposed to give a temperature reading) but we weren't quite sure how accurate it would be.  We also placed some cones inside the kiln which melted at 925 and 1100 degrees just so we could see what actual temperature we had reached when we unpacked.  We said a little prayer and started firing.  It took a day before the kiln was cool enough to unpack....the results were mixed....some prayers were answered and some pots were binned!! We learned heaps....firstly the pyrometer wasn't as accurate as we thought......the plan was to try and reach 1000 degrees but both cones had melted completely so we think we fired to around the 1200 degree mark.  But many pots can be refired either in the next test run or in a Raku firing......for me personally I found some red boot polish that added the colour I lacked and sprayed it with polyurethane to seal it so that all was not lost!!  Will keep you posted as to how the second trial goes. That's half the fun as a potter.....you are always learning and experimenting and saying prayers!

Thanks for following us. Regards, Lynda