anagama pots
after many interruptions I have at last polished up the photos of my pots from the anagama firing and put them up on a web page, here.
I also experimented with some flowers. these naked baked earth pots seem to work better with flowers than glazed pots. it’s problematic getting water to stay in them; even those with no cracks which ought to be well vitrified, like the scored red clay bottle below, allow water to seep out. a plastic bag works best, filled after insertion.
this is the terracotta crank, pure and simple, fired at the back of the kiln, which would have been cooler. I must ask Valentines what the grog in the crank is made of. if it is fireclay, it must increase the possible firing temperature quite a bit. you can’t see the true colour clearly in the photograph, in fact it varies between a greenish cast and a purple one which has a sheen to it. I will definitely get some more of this clay, both to use on its own, and to mix with stoneware clays, probably one of the buff cranks, to get a better iron-rich dark clay body. I won’t get these wonderful dark colours in my kiln though.
at the back of the kiln, away from the bulk of the ash and heat, the pots are quite bare, but really cooked. the porcelain has taken on the colour of old ivory, and the iron-bearing clay has turned dark purple, or very dark khaki, with that slight shine, and some more protected parts have stayed rust coloured. nearer the front of the kiln there is more ash deposit, which has stayed solid and dry, mostly. but this pot has shine and rough ash/ember, and some good colour as well.
the other side of it is well covered a in a dry haze of ash, but there is still that purple colour.
Shozo and Gas picked this tall narrow pot as something really special; they liked the clouded effect of the porcelain overlay, and it has picked up the colours of ash, flame and reduction in a subtle way. because porcelain fires translucent, the uneven thickness of the overlay makes it cloudy. another random painterly thing that clay can do.
this bottle was one of those right next to the firemouth. I suspect the temperature was lower there, under all the ember, but this pot has wonderful scorch marks on it. all in all, I think Gas’s medieval Japanese kiln firing does suit my pots, unlike the usual western anagama firing which involves a lot more ash on the pots, so that they really are glazed, or even the pots being glazed before they go into the firing.
frustratingly I won’t get a chance to fire my work like this again for some time. ten days is a big chunk of time, and then there is the recovery time, as well! my knees are not getting any younger. and of course I am dependent on someone else’s firing expertise and willingness to allow me to participate in the firing and take up space in the kiln. I am very grateful to Gas for the chance to do this, and to all the other co-stokers who helped fire the kiln.
anagama unpacked
we unpacked the kiln yesterday afternoon. it rained while we were doing it, so there wasn’t so much light and I had the wrong camera with me for low light conditions. Linda and Erwin came, Vivienne Rodwell-Davies, who made pages and pages of beautiful ink and wash drawings of the event at the weekend,
it was a very Japanese event, as Gas, Ko, and Shozo clustered around the kiln mouth, taking out the pots and discussing them animatedly, handing them to us ignorant mortals to clean up and pass around. it was very exciting. the first ones were those which had been immersed in ash and ember, so they were still covered in ash. Linda scrubbed them in water, but I kept two of mine back, as I wanted to photograph them in that state before they were cleaned.
we put most of them on the blue staging which we used to work out the pack, trying to keep to where they were in the kiln. but then they overflowed onto various perches around the place. Svend’s big pot appeared to be fine, but turned out to have three or four major cracks in the lower part. it was nearly as dramatic to remove it as to put it in the kiln. it looks very beautiful anyway.
this is Shozo talking to Gas. he is very intense. I would have liked to talk to him more, his work is very interesting, and he has done a residency in Northumberland and had a one man show at the Galerie Besson, apart from numerous exhibitions and workshops internationally. I hope to put a link to his website here.
here are a couple of my pots, photographed au naturel.
I was very happy with the result. there is a little shine from the ash, but not much, and it just livens the pots up a little. otherwise they are too dry, I was informed by my Japanese friends. the porcelain applied to the pots works really well like this, as there is no glaze covering it. the clays I use fire well in an anagama, as they have some iron in them and the more iron, the more colour. anyway, I shall discuss this when I have been able to photograph the pots and make a web page. Gas’s pot which was in front of Svend’s is very beautiful. I hope to get hold of a photo of that too. Vicki had some good results. John Butler had two bottles I saw which looked very special, and Lisa Hammond some great tall vases/jars. I don’t think it was so successful for her teabowls.
before we opened the kiln we went to Hatfield Art in Clay ceramic fair. it is huge and most of the work was not to my taste. it was nice to see some old friends, like Nic Collins, and new friends, Linda and Erwin. there are five or six big marquees of fifty potters each, and some solo tents in the middle. I found Akiko Hirai again – I bought two of her plates at Rufford two years ago, and I bought two more this time. I find her work very feminine and charming. and I bought a small bowl from Svend, quite a deep enclosing shape, in temoku ( a thick flowing black glaze with brown edges), with three little shell scars in the bottom. I also found a very good book on African ceramics, For Hearth and Altar: African Ceramics from the Keith Achepohl Collection by Kathleen Bickford Berzock. there are some wonderful pieces in it, which I hope to be inspired by.
a long day with a lot of driving, I left for home at seven forty-five, the car full of boxes of pots, just as Lisa Hammond arrived with Lukas, her student assistant and Nic Collins; I got home at ten twenty.
anagama last day
eighth day of firing.
up at four thirty for my five am shift. its cool, the sky is clear in the east but there is thin cloud above. earlier there was a sickle moon hanging low.
T does a quite deliberate payback for the hours tied up asleep on the blanket, she runs out of the gate, across the road and into the cow pasture from which she flushes a hare back onto the road and up the hill. she disappears for ten minutes, and scrapes her front legs just below the elbow. so that’s the end of letting her run that way. I arrive ten minutes later than I wanted to for my shift. Gas is quite excited; the temperature is up high enough for the ash to be melting on the pots; Svend’s pot (the only one tall enough to be visible in the heap of ember) is shiny, and the flames are reflected in its surface.
using the larch, the flames are white in the firebox, and after stoking the flame from the chimney is huge, writhing round and bursting with miniature flame balls like fire dragons. it is yellow rather than red. all these are good indicators that we are up to temperature – twelve-fifty – which is what Gas was hoping for. he rakes the embers with the long chicken foot rake. this allows the kiln to breathe, and the chimney flame does its thing again. he goes off to his tent at six, leaving instructions to wake him at seven for a further rake, but I can’t raise him, and to tell the truth I think I can keep going for a while, I found a longer stick to push the embers aside when I stoke. this is fun. I find myself brandishing a metre of flaming wood. mostly I get the chimney flame to flower into the madly jumping flickering pyrotechnic display which indicates that I am doing the right thing.
Eventually I get Gas up at eight, and he rakes again.
Svend arrives to check everything is going okay, disappears for a walk, and then is back to dive in at nine. he first finds himself a plank, and with it digs around in the embers, turning them over and over. then he opens the bottom firemouth and uses a metal handled shovel to dig out a hole in the ash and cinder, quenching it again with water.
then another go with the plank in the embers.
one of Lisa Hammond’s teabowls turns up in the front and it comes out to cool in ash and ember. It has a shino glaze on it which is partly peeling off. It looks very rough. probably not what she wants, but the dryness and rough texture are what I am hoping for. Svend has to go at eleven, but now we have achieved temperature, and can relax a little, keeping it around twelve hundred degrees until midnight. the larch is almost all used up anyway, so it wouldn’t be possible to push any more.
I missed Phil Roger’s demonstration, and Lisa’s yesterday. but this afternoon Gas demonstrates making a teabowl, not on the wheel, but using a disc of wood rather as though it was a wheel, he flattens the clay onto it with a chopping action, then pulls and squeezes the sides up. someone comments that this is how a raised pie, like a pork pie, is made. so much hand building has similarities to handling pastry, or dough.
a series of deft gestural cuts with a bamboo knife finishes the foot-rim
he makes the point that Raku does not mean party, as the traditional translation says, but a place where the original teabowls were made by the tile-maker Chojiro, and the castle building works where the clay was dug.
now we are more relaxed all my energy has gone. it is very hot and humid and I sweat buckets on the first two and a half hours of my shift, and I’m feeling pretty tired. the kiln is so hot that the buttons on my shirt burn me. I should have a scarf to protect my neck and chest. Brigitte relieves me again, and I go off to wash and bed. I just can’t stay up any longer. I nod off over the laptop in the camper.
meanwhile Gas keeps going with Robert Sanderson’s help, and gets the temperature up even higher. Linda tells me the next day that she thinks it went to thirteen hundred. everything is finally closed down by three am.
next morning we all meet in front of the kiln for an extended coffee and chat. Linda and Erwin are staying on for a few days before Hatfield ceramic fair, Robert is flying back to Ireland this afternoon, and I have to pack up and get home today. its hot again. I feel dazed, sleepy and dehydrated on the way home, but we make it without incident, and I start on the blog on Monday night.
on Friday we open the kiln!
anagama saturday
seventh day of firing.
Vicki gets up early to let me have a lie-in, theoretically, although I still wake at the same time and can�t get back to sleep � the demo is running through my head. at least I get a chance to have a yoga practice before it gets too hot (in front of the cars � it�s the only level space). it’s nice to be able to potter a bit, but I am up and down to get the clay out, organise tools, boards, clay condition. I think it goes alright. I make two pots, a bottle and a vase type vessel, one with the porcelain scraped over it with a knife, and the other with the random speckle of porcelain bits scattered over it. there are some good comments, especially about the cracks � they want to know why, of course, but a few times cracks and missing parts are pointed out to me � almost as if people can�t bear to see this imperfection going on � or maybe as if it won�t stand up with the cracks. and then the idea of them as flawed vessels which won�t hold water for flowers. in the end my comment is that perhaps it�s a good thing, as I don�t intend them to be flower vases.
I buy two little porcelain beakers and a big teabowl from Linda de Nil. they are like little paintings, with the ash from the firing, the ash in the porcelain body, and some dry porcelain added to the wet outside of the pot. I use the beautiful teabowl for my tea and coffee from now on. we need lots of tea. it is very hot and humid, and although the kiln site in the trees is cool in itself, firing is very very hot work. the camper is unbearable, even with everything open. I bring a blanket for T and anchor her to various spots, for the demonstration (and Sal, because I can guarantee that if allowed to be loose he would be spotted having a big pooh in the middle of the grass just as I am in mid flow) and by the kiln. she is very good about it and relaxes totally, covered in sawdust.
Gas and Svend intend their big push up to full temperature tonight, with long flames which will reach right to the pots at the back. the chimney already has a big flame every time the kiln is stoked, with explosive burning of the gases as they exit. the boards of the roof started to curl up, so they built up the back of the chimney and put a shelf across to force the flame forwards. I have seen kiln sheds whose protective corrugated sheeting has been burnt through by the chimney flame.
the blowhole has a beautiful flowering flame; exit gases play up and down it as the consumption of wood varies.
more potters arrive. Phil Rogers last night, this morning, Robert Sanderson, Lisa Hammond, Yo Thom, John Butler, and my old friend Sally Raven, a co-stoker at Nic Collins’ kiln. Sally tells me she has an anagama kiln herself now, built to Svend’s plan and with his help, in North Wales, and also that she got a first. very good news. Lisa, John and Phil all have pots in the kiln; Lisa has a lot, nearly as many as I do.
Lisa gives her demonstration before and after lunch, with a slide show, Robert Sanderson talks about wood-fired kilns, then Yo and John also do talks about their work, and in John’s case his revolutionary fast-fire anagama kiln. he is very concerned, and rightly, about the impact his work makes on the environment, and he is trying to develop a kiln which will give the same sort of firing as a traditional anagama kiln, but using far less wood. this is quite controversial! Svend does a talk on his latest kiln. it is very hot in the building; I see bits and pieces of things from the back, under the awning outside.
Brigitte takes the early part of my shift, so I only do two hours. as I leave Svend is pulling a vast quantity of ash and cinder out of the bottom of the kiln at the front, to lower the ember heap. it glows red until he pours water on it. everything is much more dramatic at night.
afterwards in the camper I leave every window and the side door and tailgate open, and have a sluice down in the bucket. instead of the electric I light a few candles, by the light of which I can read and write perfectly well, I can�t think why I didn�t use the candles before. it�s a clear night. what amazing weather for camping. the wood is so much cooler that even sitting around the kiln is much more comfortable. although I do have a few mosquito bites. drinking tea is better than water I think, and its enjoyable to use a beautiful teabowl.
off to bed. the camper has cooled down a little. everybody who is not firing is watching the Shiho Kanzaki �Fire Artist� film.
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