This lovely wall hung wood fired turtle is among my favorite pieces. In wood firing all the shiny glaze comes from melted wood ash that falls on the piece during firing so the piece goes into the kiln with no glaze on it. In order to keep the pieces from sticking to the shelves they are put on little clumps of refractory clay called wadding. One of the unintended but beautiful effects occurs when the flame causes flashing around the wadding and leaves a bare spot behind. It works a bit like a resist because the ash can not settle on that spot. For this piece I used that void creation to create the design on the bottom and top of the shell. The flashing effect in this case is only subtle. The piece is based on the ornate box turtle that occurs in West Texas, where I was based at the time.
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