So that I could slip away from work (shh, don't tell my boss) and meet some friends for lunch on Monday, I fired the kiln over night on Sunday instead of during the day on Monday. It takes 16 hours to cool, though, so I still couldn't open it until I got up this morning... and here's the result --
That new plaque (a coffee grinder, if you can't tell) was a challenge! It didn't occur to me until after I had it poured that it might not actually fit in the kiln. The kiln is 25" across, but you need at least an inch of space between the heating elements on the side and whatever you're firing. Fortunately it turned out to fit snugly, being 17" tall. Because of that space you need, too, you can't exactly... lean something tall against the wall of the kiln. It either needs to stand up straight or lay flat.
Some new things were in this firing, as I've been a busy bee scouring around for some new molds. The plaque is new, as are the mushrooms plaques, the baby booties planter, and the cow skull planter (I KNOW!). But the crowning achievement there is the wheat/bread plate. It's a mold that my grandmother had dating back to the 60s, and it's a mold I had but had never made up until a few years ago when my ceramic room suffered what I like to call "The Great Shelf Collapse of 1997." Er, that's pretty self-explanatory. A shelf collapsed, taking not a small number of molds with it, and the bread plate was one of them. I recently found another one, though, and am happily beginning production. I plan to put the one my grandmother made in some of the finished object photos, for comparison.
And now, as usual when I open the kiln from a bisque firing like this one, I'm jazzed to go paint!