Post-Firing Kiln saga - it wasn't what I was expecting!!

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

Amazingly it did hold, though there were a number of surface imperfections which was disappointing. I did feel reasonably pleased with the overall look of the piece, but it still wasn't fully working for me, it didn't flow, felt somehow very heavy to look at and perhaps too 'stiff' in its aesthetic.

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.