We ran this one two cones harder than we meant to, and the plum glaze went somewhere it has never been before.
The intention was a normal cone 10 reduction, the same schedule we have used since the new elements went in. What happened instead is that the heavy reduction ran nearly ninety minutes rather than sixty, because the damper was set from the previous firing and nobody checked it.
The plum is a copper red at heart, so a long reduction pushes it darker and, past a point, almost to black where it pools. On the wide bowls, where the glaze is thickest in the well, it did exactly that — a black centre grading out to the usual plum on the walls and breaking umber over the throwing rings.
Four of the eleven pieces are the best things to come out of this kiln all year. Three are unusable. We are keeping the schedule.
