At the end of September I took part in my first woodfiring.
We fired the Anagama Kiln, led by Svend Bayer and Brigitte Colleaux at Oxford Kilns.
The week was full of glazing pots, chopping and stacking wood, communal meals and a big collective effort. The kiln fired for 62 hours! With groups of us on shift throughout stoking the fire every few minutes, all day.. and all of the night.
The kiln during one of our night shifts.
Firing team 1 - Left to right consisted of me, Nora, Emily and Erin. Our shifts were 10am - 2pm and then 10pm- 2am for the nearly three days it took to fire.
Gavin and Erin on the log splitter, Emily bringing the wheel barrow of cut logs over to me to stack.
All our pots laid out on tables ready to be loaded.
Our first two days were spent finishing glazing, wadding and loading the kiln.
As wood ash melt it forms a glass-like glaze, so each and every piece needed wadding added to the base to keep the pot from fusing permanently to the kiln shelf, so a lot of time was spent crouched inside the kiln adding these to the bases of pots, where lids sit on bodies of pots and also any stacking pots.
Wadding - a refractory clay like mixture made up of a clay and alumina hydrate. Image below shows a good example of some wadding marks. The lighter sections is where the wadding would have sat and thus prevented the surface below from getting exposed to wood ash in the firing.
Svend stoking the embers to encourage the ash to travel further into the kiln and also clear the firebox so we can load more wood.
This shift was spent watching the flame coming out of the top of the kiln and stoking the kiln with more logs whenever the flame started to wane.
Svend checking the pyrometer. Please note how little PPE he has in comparison to us ahha
After 62 hours, on Sunday 27th Sept the firing concluded and we all headed home to catch up on sleep and get back to Christmas making while the kiln cooled down.
A week later we returned to Oxford to unload!
Some of my haul. I left most pieces unglazed on the outside or just decorated with a slip I had made, so any colour you see is from the heat work and ash from the wood! Some of my pieces like the largest vase in the picture were in the side stoking channels so we were loading logs directly onto them near the end of the firing which is why they’re particularly ash covered.
Below are some examples of work that will be featured in my online shop update on the 31st October, they are truly one offs and work that is slightly different from my usual pots so it was really fun and exciting to make them. I hope that joy and creativity I felt making them shows through :)
I had such a lovely time with this great bunch of people! It made me so excited to make different work as you have less control over how the pots look I felt slightly less burdened by a specific outcome I thought they ought to or would look like and instead was just thrilled or in some cases learnt something instead which was very freeing. I made bigger and more experimental work than I usually do knowing the kiln would do its thing and make each piece entirely unique and inimitable.
I’ve spent the month sitting with and admiring them and now its time to share them with you and hope you like them too!
Shop update will be Saturday 31st at 10am and 9 am for Newsletter subscribers :)
Thanks for supporting!
J xxx
