Strong winds and two firings

Saying goodbye to 2024 - Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Here I am, at my now favourite place to write — Biancafe, my “local” cafe, the one I wrote about here. As per my decision to not neglect the Shelf, I came to change the display and leave the new mugs and espresso beakers. The place is quite busy and I am always shy to start moving things to and from the Shelf, so I ordered a cinnamon roll (sorry,

Diana Strinati Baur

, not enough for two this time) and my usual oat milk cappuccino and am sitting here writing and gathering courage to get up and unpack my stuff.

The weather is fierce, the wind is furious. Not as intense and violent as a few years back, when trees were falling left and right, and I came back to my car after a Polish class to find the windshield smashed by the biggest branch I’d ever seen not on a tree, but still pretty turbulent. Weirdly, though, it’s about 10 ºC and it feels like the end of Winter rather than the start.

Strong winds are wild and unpredictable, and, whether you love or hate them, they surely command respect. I remember my maternal grandmother (avó Maria) didn’t like the wind. It messed with her head, she used to say. I know that, when I am indoors, I also feel a fearful reluctance to go outside. But, unlike my grandmother, when I do venture out, I love to feel the wind on my face, the way it blows my hair all over the place and tries to push me this way and that. It makes me smile and makes me feel alive. It also makes me feel small and fragile, and forces me to walk more firmly, to pay attention to every step. Most of all, I love to listen to the conversations between trees and wind — what stories they must tell each other.

I am of course not talking about tornados or hurricanes. Those are scary and not to be romanticised. But luckily, we don’t have those here. The year of the very strong winds, the year of the shattered windshield, was an anomaly. The strong winds like the ones we are having today… those just feel like the cleanup crew, blowing off all the cobwebs, dusting the corners and making everything fresh-smelling for the new year.

I know I wrote that my previous post would be December’s first and last but here I am to tell you that I was wrong. The reason I decided to still send you this letter in December is that I didn’t want to leave it to next year to show you the results of the last two glaze firings of 2024.

Just like the wind, fire is unpredictable and not to be trifled with. I opened the kiln last Sunday morning after a 13 hour long firing, and a cooling period of about 32 hours.

before and 1150 ºC and 45 hours later, give or take

It was a glaze firing, the last firing of this year. In it was my precious platter as well as new mugs, beakers and trays.

There was also a coffee filter holder which I am trying to get right, still a work in progress.

Apart from refining the shape and making it less heavy and clunky, I need to work on the decoration… this one was supposed to be dark red. I used an underglaze I’ve had issues with in the past but forgot. It’s an Amaco underglaze from their Velvet line, Cinnamon. It’s a beautiful dark red wine colour but it completely burns off under my transparent glaze at 1150 ºC. This is a complete mystery to me, as the label says these underglazes can go to 1240 ºC.

Here they are before I dipped them in the transparent glaze and put them in the kiln. The mug too, by the way, changed colour from blue to green… I really don’t know why this would happen, my guess is it must be the glaze; it probably wouldn’t happen if I used Amaco’s own transparent…

In the preceding firing, the one mentioned in my previous post, the one to a mere 1040 ºC, were a bunch of Christmas ornaments (see first picture at the top of this post) and decorations, and the much awaited (by me, obviously) test tiles with the wild clay slips from Porto Santo.

1000 ºC; 1040 ºC; 1150 ºC

The temperature and the glaze definitely changed the tone and colours of the slips —middle photo — but not as dramatically as before — photo on the right —, which means whatever pieces I decorate with these slips won’t be taken above 1040 ºC. The extra 100 degrees make a huge difference, so the lower I take them to the stronger the contrast between the clays. I bet you can guess what I will be working on in the new year…

Back to the platter and the mugs… I’m going to level with you: I love them. I know I made them but… well, I think they look amazing and I am very proud of them. It is not without trepidation that I will send them out into the wide wild world, but how they will do is out of my control.

In Big Magic,

Elizabeth Gilbert

writes something like “I can only be in charge of producing the work itself” (sorry, not the exact quote, I don’t have the book on me…) and that, I’ve come to realise, is the simple truth.

Realising you have no control over something and not caring are, however, two different things and I guess I am still working on the part where I don’t care if no one notices my work and no one buys my pieces. Maybe I will always care but hopefully, at some point, I will stop stressing about it and worrying how it reflects on, and what it means about the work itself.

In the meantime… here are some pictures and a short video (if you hit Play with the volume on, sorry for the background noise — I made the video at the market where I sell my pottery on Sundays).

There will be more photos on Instagram and the beakers and mugs (the ones above as well as two others I haven’t yet photographed) will also soon be available on my Etsy store. The platter has joined the large vase at a local gallery where I have shown some of my pottery before.

This letter, truly the last one of 2024, is reaching you on a Sunday because I don’t want to bother you during the holidays and also because, hopefully, I will not be spending any time at the computer until after Christmas.

I hope you won’t need to either.

As always, thank you so much for reading and I will see you next time. Until then, I wish you a restful, peaceful and joyful holiday season.

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If you would like to see my work

I’m on Instagram, and have an Etsy store where you can find some pieces created in my small home studio.

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