Woodfiring is a rather all-consuming event for any given weekend. There's glazing the work, then wadding, the process of putting special little clay feet on all your pieces so they don't get glazed to the shelves, and then loading... The firing itself is almost a 24 hour process- at least for us at Clayworks. We sit just within the city limits in a residential neighborhood and therefore have to do the bulk of the heavy firing at night, when plumes of smoke can't be seen. Done during the day, and the fire departments gets endless calls of alarm about billowing smoke in the village— not so good for a healthy fire department/ceramic organization relationship. After firing, the kiln cools for a good 48 hours and then there is unloading. And sanding the shelves and cleaning up the kiln etc. For any of you who are experts on wood kilns... this is not a very technical account, but simply an excited first-timers experience of the process.
The brilliant and beautiful thing about the wood kiln is that it is the wood ash that creates the glaze- as I understand it. As the kiln gets up to ridiculously high temperatures the ash melts onto the pots, creating unpredictable and magical surfaces- earthy, brown and golden- endless variations... The fire licks and curls around the pieces, painting them for you. And of course- woodkiln gurus who have a much deeper understanding of this process, know how to manipulate the surfaces and placement of work within the kiln so that certain results are more likely. But it is still a partnership with the elements, which is simply never predictable. I used various glazes on the interiors of my bowls, leaving the exteriors blank for the fire to do its bidding.
I'm so excited to see the results I can hardly stand it!
-Saturday afternoon: Gary and Adam patiently building the coals little by little...
-The backside of the kiln- and long hours of growing the fire slowly...
-The wood to be burned (and this isn't all of it)...
-My second shift started at 3:00am- I joined in the stoking, working to get the wood chamber up to temperature...
-The billowing smoke in the dead of night- which can't be detected by city folk and won't raise alarm...
-Woodkiln manager/god Jim and Lenni stoking. One person quick pulls the plug, while the other shoves the wood through. This done about every two minutes or so.
-5am- Adam preparing the salt and soda for the salt chamber... (Our kiln has a wood chamber, and a second salt chamber. Salt and soda are added to that chamber right at the end of the firing to produce different sorts of effects on the work.)
-Working on getting the salt chamber up to temperature-- cone 11-- at which point we stoked heavily before adding the salt/soda... Yoshi here, watching the fire and ordering the stoking whenever the flames died down enough to see pots through the chimney opening.
-The LAST stoke in the salt chamber before closing up the kiln...
Once that was done, and everyone had thrown a final piece of wood into the fire... we closed up the kiln... bricked and mudded up the 'cone windows' with newspaper and slip. The kiln will smolder and simmer down over the next three days while we wait (im)patiently for the unloading on Wednesday.
With everything that is going right now; the madness of my impending move, wrapping up things at home and work, the one thought that is going through my head and keeps me awake at night: I wonder how my pots turned out??
--Rachel Robinson
Rachel Robinson is the Community Arts Director for Baltimore Clayworks. She has been with the Clayworks family for four years and will be leaving Clayworks to pursue her love of travel.
Rachel’s voice and care have been in every project that she was a part of. Her smile and cheer….absolutely contagious in the office, studio, and classrooms!
We'll miss you Rachel!
