I had fully expected to come into Uni and find my white piece in bits, to my amazement it was intact!!!

However!  the black piece I had felt so much more confident about was a different story, it came out broken, with halves of ellipses sheared off and with cracks in the joins. I couldn't understand what had happened as I was confident that the joins were good and the construction was sound, there wasn't any off balance sections that would cause undue joint stress. What I realised had happened after taking some time to reflect was that it was likely down to inadequate drying inside the hollow forms due to a lack of holes being made in the different sections of the piece.

It was such a basic error, I felt that it was a reflection of where my head has been at and how I have been feeling, struggling with focus, attention and concentration more than I would like. I was also surprised at my reaction, I would normally have been upset when something like this happened (at least in the short term) but I just couldn't find the energy or emotion to react to this in the way I would have expected.

I had a tutorial with Rob and we discussed what had happened and how I was feeling and I have decided to seek some support. Rob suggested that I use the pieces as glaze test pieces to experiment with some glaze finishes as I had reached a point where I wanted to explore this.

Below are images of the broken piece and one of the piece before firing for comparison. This is smooth black clay from valentines and will go darker after a higher stoneware firing.

Both pieces where scheduled to be fired on 17th November, however the large piece broke in two at the centre joining branch between the two main halves of the sculpture due to a mishap whilst it was being loaded into the kiln. This also resulted in some of the smaller disc pieces falling off which I chose to leave off as I was so fed up with the fact that the piece had broken I couldn't face faffing about trying to re-attach them.

Ultimately it was my fault that this had happened, despite me building the piece directly onto a kiln shelf to reduce the amount of handling it would encounter, I hadn't placed enough temporary support props around the piece to support it during the firing and one tiny error during handling  caused a massive break to occur.

I repaired the join by soaking the ends of the join in vinegar and made a vinegar and paper slip from the clay body, I then used this to repair the join. I wasn't convinced it was going to work and I nearly recycled the piece. 

​Below are the images of where the piece broke and the subsequent repair.

Below the pieces in the kiln ready for firing, a further prop was placed under the ball at the front. You can see in the image where I placed wax resist on the rims of the thinner hemispheres to slow down drying. The small clay wedges were providing stability and stopping the piece from making any wobbling movements whilst it was being moved.

I enjoyed  the construction of this piece so much more, it was simpler in terms of the components used  and the overall balance of the finished shape felt like it flowed so much more than the bulkier white one. I was still determined that I needed to avoid adding a fussy surface to the piece despite suggestions from Rob to develop some glazes.

​Both the black and white piece should be dry enough to be fired in a couple of weeks.