THE LITTLE CUP THAT COULD

Illustrated is a small "bourbon" cup with a slightly troubled past. Starting at the beginning this cup was from a group of pieces thrown off the hump using a small batch, gritty, sandy clay, most were facetted of which for some reason, I thought this was the best of the group. Being the top of the class as it were, I decided to go with the tried and true Oribe with iron and along with some 45 other pots, it was loaded and fired. Once unloaded, I realized that the very bottom of the kiln was slightly underfired and I decided to put this aside and fire it again to see what would develope. Loaded again and then midway through the firing we had a power outage leading to the loss of nearly the entire kiln load or really about 75% of the contents. For what ever the reasons are, most of my glazes do not fair well when they are firing and the temperature drops quickly leading to bad pinholes and a rather dull, muddy surface and are even worse when refired.  As I was surveying the bad to worse result, I decided to just hang on to this cup and several other pieces to refire next glaze fire to see what the results may be and in this case, third time is a charm (?).       

As you can see, the cup came out with a number of other Oribe based pieces with deep, shiny surfaces with not a single pinhole and truth be told, I am glad I decided to refire these pots, most of which I am much happier with now than I was just a few short days ago. A fellow collector asked me about when I was happy with my work and I told him, the feeling is always short lived but I must admit, I was happy with this little cup that could for more than the usual five minutes and it is likely to become my new bourbon cup for the foreseeable future for at least eleven minutes into the future.