An Elephant Falls

Opening a kiln is a gut-wrenching experience for me.  This past Saturday was a humbling day.  A kiln loaded with three, 24-inch works, equated to a meltdown.  I trimmed the vessels too thin toward the foot, such that they could not survive the heat.  (At peak temperature, the porcelain gets soft like 'taffy', where by all structural deficiencies are revealed.)  Upon seeing what happened in this kiln, the image of a fallen elephant came to mind.  These where large, majestic works, with many hours put into each one.  (It doesn't help things that my exhibition is 3 weeks away.)  I return back to the wheel, ready to make adjustments from what I learned. The image below shows one of the collapsed porcelain pieces on it's side.

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