Pottery News!

So, while it was cold and wet, I used the opportunity to fire some pots I made earlier this summer.  I like to use primitive wood-firing for my pots, because it’s quick, simple (though much more complex than just popping them in a kiln and pressing ‘start”) and it makes them look FABULOUS.

A shiny black tea bowl- ignore the George Forman grill in the background...

The variable atmosphere in the firing (oxidation versus reduction) and the trace minerals from the ash, and carbon from the smoke, all combine to create beautiful, unpredictable, “fire cloud” markings on the pots.  Oxygen brings out the red of the iron oxide in the red clay, lack of oxygen (reduction, in potter’s language) dulls the color and makes the blackest blacks and whitest whites. I LOVE the uncertainty of it- I can try to set it up to get good results, but you never know exactly how they’ll turn out, or even if they’ll survive- pots crack or even explode at much higher rates in primitive firing than kiln firing.

A bowl I made being removed from an outdoor pit firing- we used horse turds for fuel!

My firing chamber is my household woodstove- that’s why I had to wait for cool weather to fire.  For clay to become ceramic, it must reach at least 500 degrees F (but hotter is better, I aim for 1000F) A regular woodstove is quite capable of getting pots that hot.  My other option is outdoor pit firing, but it is still fire season here in the West, so all outdoor fires (other than barbecue grills) are illegal.

Pots in stove with fire merrily blazing...

A firing from start to finish takes 45 minutes-several hours.  The pots must be preheated on top of the stove before they are moved into the firebox, and then gradually heated by building the fire slowly. I know they are done when they are starting to glow- then I pile on a whole bunch of wood, get it blazing just to make sure. Then I let it die down.  For better fire clouds, I throw some crumbled-up punky wood (old, rotten stuff) onto the pots when they are still very hot, but the fire has mostly burned out.  It smokes like crazy! If I do it too soon, it burns up completely, and the pots don’t take any color. Too late, it doesn’t burn at all, and the pots don’t get any color that way either.  It’s a judgment call.  When done right, the carbon black color is absolutely bonded to the clay, sucked into its pores.  That’s what I aim for. 

Once they pots are cool enough to touch (well, sometimes I burn my hands because I’m impatient) I pull them out and rinse off the ashes in water.  Voila, beautiful handmade, primitive-fired pottery!