(l-r) Karen Arrington, Alan Dowdy, Allison Severance, Karen Wilkening, Carol Wisdom, Jill Harbison, me, Vejune Svotelis, Amy Castner (photo by Blair Meerfeld)
The Greenbelt Community Center's Wood-Firing Workshop took place this month. We loaded and fired the kiln on October 3-4. The kiln belongs to Allison Severance of Boonsboro, Maryland, which is a lovely 1.25 hour drive from Greenbelt.
The workshop started very early on 10/3, we met at 7:30am then carpooled out to the kiln. (It's important to get an early start, because after we left that day, Allison began to pre-heat the kiln, which takes several hours more.) As soon as we arrived, Allison announced "Mea you're driving this bus!" meaning she was letting me direct all of the work. Generally, I feel pretty confident about my knowledge of wood-kilns, but I'm glad that she hung around, cuz I still needed to ask her questions sometimes. Some of my students have several wood-firings under their belt now, and their experience really comes in handy too.
After the pots were loaded (here's Carol Wisdom photographing the fully-stacked kiln), we built the kiln's door out of bricks. This job only needed 3 or 4 people, so everyone else busied themselves by stacking several bales of wood. Allison was grateful and impressed! I'll probably repeat this later ... the potters from Greenbelt are the most outstanding people with whom I've ever wood-fired.
The next day 10/4, we divided ourselves into shifts to fire the kiln. Allison and her boyfriend Blair Meerfeld (who heads the ceramics program at the Art League School in Alexandria, VA) directed the stoking through the morning hours. They put the kiln into reduction from 11am to noon, after which we started stoking for heat rise. Shortly after that, when me and my gang had settled into the stoking patterns, Allison and Blair announced that they were going to run some errands, and would be back in a few hours. Say what??!! "Don't worry Mea! You know what you're doing," Allison said. This is the first time I've been left in charge of a hot kiln. I admit I felt uneasy at first, but like I said before, I was surrounded by outstanding potters, and everybody worked together like a clock. By the time Allison and Blair returned, we had gone past cone 8 (nearly 2300°F) and were almost ready to salt. This is me in my official "in charge" capacity, checking cones through the spyhole (photo by Karen Arrington).
This is Karen Arrington tossing a salt-covered plank into the firebox (photo by Alan Dowdy). Overall we threw 10 pounds of salt into the kiln, examples of beautiful salt-glazed surfaces are shown later. During the salting stage, the chimney's dampers were closed to trap the salt gasses inside, at one point flames burst through the door of the kiln.
Yikes. We quickly opened the dampers and soon the pressure and the fire subsided, but it was a good reminder that wood-firing can be very dangerous (photo by Alan Dowdy). Once the salting was done, we went back to heat rise mode, plowing towards cone 10 (almost 2400°F). We reached temperature around 6:30pm, then we went home, exhausted, dirty, and happy.
The hardest part is waiting A WHOLE WEEK before knowing what happened to our pots! But our patience was rewarded, the kiln load was gorgeous. The unglazed surfaces glowed with rich tones and salt glaze. The celadon was clear with color ranging from gray to yellow to green. The temmoku was particularly nice, ranging from amber to rust red to espresso brown. Some folks even got the copper red glaze to work! Here are just some of the beautiful pots ...
Here is a link to Amy Castner's Flickr album from the workshop, she took great pictures, plus she titled and captioned them in a way that really depicts the sequence of events well.
Big thanks to all the potters in the workshop! They made tremendous efforts towards their pots, the kiln, and each other. They have a spirit of cooperation and learning that is a joy to be around. This is why I think the kiln rewarded us so well.
And million thanks to Allison, for all her help, guidance, and trust, and for making us feel welcome at her home and her kiln! It is truly a beautiful place to visit, and to learn, honor, and celebrate this ancient and mysterious process.
