The term “Modern Nomadic Potter” has been floating around for a while now, but I just realized that I am one of them. A somewhat new and ever-growing phenomenon, potters today seem to be untethering themselves from location, often bouncing from job to job, residency to residency, all over the country or even the world for years, perhaps decades during the establishment of their professional careers. I have recently reached the threshold, when people ask me where I’m from it feels like a trick question – I don’t know what answer they are looking for.

I was born in New Mexico, lived in California, grew up in Wisconsin, went to Indiana for grad school, taught in Kentucky, moved to Montana for a residency, worked as a technician in Vermont, and am now about to move to Montana again for two residencies in two different parts of the state. Although I like the thought of settling in Montana, I doubt that will happen. I have no idea where will be next, whether that will be the place I settle, or when I will move. This might seem crazy to some, but at least in the circles I’m running in, this is not the exception but the rule. I have some friends who have been on a tour that makes my marathon seem like a walk around the block.

The old business model for a potter to establish themselves was rooted in local community. A potter would set up a studio in the town they were from and sell their work to friends, family, collectors and enthusiasts in their area. As quality of work improved and homes in the area became saturated with their pots, potters would expand to regional and then national audiences.

Although I am sure some potters still start up this way, my experience (and the experience of a lot of young potters I have met recently) has been the exact opposite order. Establishing a career while living in several states per year means that the most logical first step is based on a national/international audience, an audience that you can rely on for regular purchases no matter what part of the country you happen to be living in at the moment. Maybe someday I will settle somewhere and then I can start doing local shows to meet people in my area and establish a local following that is more personal and direct.

From my perspective at the moment, shows and galleries that limit themselves to a regional set of artists feel a bit counterintuitive, bordering on anachronism – a reflection of a past world where pots made in one region seemed to share a root system. The place one is physically located now seems to have little to do with what the pot looks like. I couldn’t tell you what a California pot looks like versus a Vermont pot or a Minnesota pot. These are three potters who’s work I enjoy. It would almost seem as though they came from a shared tradition in their aesthetic, however they come from diverse backgrounds and are as geographically dispersed as you can get in this country.

Sunshine Cobb, Sacremento California

Marty Fielding, Middlebury Vermont

Mark Pharis, Minneapolis Minnesota

Through cross pollination occurring in schools and residency programs around the country and the ease of researching pots from all over the world via the internet, our vernaculars have become disseminated, homogenized, and nationalized. The individual aesthetic trumps regional tradition. I will readily admit, though, that this is written from the perspective of someone who is nomadic, perhaps if you are actually living near where you grew up or have been settled somewhere for 20 years, location has some sort of meaning. Maybe you know something I don’t. (Actually, I would love to hear some perspectives on this topic in the comments section…)

Establishing my career was absolutely dependent on forging a national collectorship from the onset. Central to my plan was the establishment of a webpage with Ecommerce functionality. I chose Etsy as my Ecommerce engine for it’s low cost and ease of use, but found it to be much more than that. I found that there are millions of people out there(growing by the day) who are fully committed to buying handmade work directly from the maker. They might not be pottery specific, maybe they logged in to buy handmade chocolates and fell in love with a pot by accident. There is a massive yet tight-knit community there. Artists help other artists sell work. Customers promote their favorite makers through the treasury system. Makers get to know their clientele on a personal level and can forge long-lasting relationships, just like you can in a local community. To my surprise, it seems to have everything a traditional community has, but it’s location is Earth as a whole, and it feels like an endless ocean of possible connections. It makes New York City look small. It seems that through Etsy I have found the support of a community just like a geographically rooted traditional potter would have, but the crowd is bigger than the biggest city, and will follow me no matter where I move.

Sign up here

I have decided, once again, that my clay recipe is in need of some improvement. As I write this, I am amidst the long and involved process of retooling my clay body recipe for optimal results. It has been a couple years since I mixed my own clay and find myself eager to return to it. While not a total overhaul, I hope to make my clay recipe a bit cleaner burning, whiter, smoother, more vitreous, and less pyroplastic, while expanding it’s workable temprature range.

About a year and a half ago, I switched from mixing my own clay of my own formulation to buying pre-mixed clay of somebody else’s fromulation. I did this largely because it was essential that my clay be pugged, but I didn’t have access to a pug mill, and certainly couldn’t have afforded one at the time. I tried a number of commercially produced pugged clay. It was ok, but there were some major issues.

Quality Control

I will refrain from mentioning a manufacturer, but across several thousand pounds, from different batches and lot numbers, I was getting large flakes of rusted metal in my clay. Attendees at a workshop last spring witnessed me pull a chunk about 3/4 of an inch wide out of a freshly opened bag of clay! This would absolutely NEVER happen if I were the one mixing the clay (as opposed to a laborer who may not even work with clay, let alone know how critical it is that porcelain be pure). I know that something like this can and did cost me big time in terms of work lost, so I really prefer to be in the driver’s seat.

Specificity

I’m doing something very risky and technically challenging with my clay. Although I was able to get beautiful results and decent (by my standards) survival rate, the clay was not a glove fit for my work. It could have used a bit more tooth (stand-up ability and reduced shrinkage) and a bit less pyroplasticity (the sagging and warping that occurs during the firing as the clay melts). It had a narrow firing range. If it was a bit overfired to cone 7, it would cause the glaze to craze(or shiver, hard to tell which). When buying my clay, I had a few options but couldn’t do anything to change small things about the clay other than to keep buying and testing new clays and hope something worked. I would much rather be responsible for. and in control of, all aspects of my material.

Portability

I was using a clay body for more than a year and was really dialed into the nuances of that particular clay. I then moved to the other side of the country to be a resident at the Archie Bray Foundation. I was not able to bring clay with me, and it was not realistic to ship 500 pounds of clay from the east coast to Montana. It took most of the summer to figure out the new clay and so I didn’t really get anything done there. This would have never happened if I had a decent recipe that I knew how to use. Never again.

I have no real shortcut for developing clay bodies. It is just a matter of handmixing a series of carefully chosen tests. I recommend doing this often, as you will learn a lot about the properties of the various raw materials you have available.

So my starting point was the old recipe I posted a long time ago here. I then made some initial substitutions based on a little research and some recommendations from others.

Whiteness

One thing I learned from using commercial clay is that the whiter the clay is, the more bright and vibrant the glazes appear. The Laguna #16 I was using was immaculately white, and the my pots became instantly more attractive with it’s use. I decided to replace the EPK with Grolleg Kaolin, as it is more pure, and more consistent from bag to bag. I also replaced OM4 ball clay with C&C ball clay, known for it’s whiteness and commonly used in the formulation of porcelains. Now, the dirtiest thing left in the recipe was the bentonite. I tried using macaloid, which is very white, but insanely expensive. The 2-3 percent addition nearly DOUBLED the price of the clay batch. Dennis at Northeast Ceramic Supply, my new distributor, turned me onto Bentonite L-10 White, a very white but still reasonably priced bentonite. I believe that this is what is used in Laguna’s commercial clay bodies, which, as I’ve said before, are astoundingly white, and quite plastic.

Range and Glaze Fit
The ratio of Flint to Feldspar is actually right on point, allowing a perfect fit with my glazes from cone 5 to cone 8. Range is important when firing electric kilns as I do. Rarely is the temperature even top to bottom, and with the basic one-thermocouple computerized kilns (which I don’t like but am currently using at the new studio in Bennington College) there is little you can do to even the firing out as it’s going.

Feldspar Choices

Keeping the ratio the same, I decided to update the feldspar choice. I was used to Kona F-4, initially chosen for it’s whiteness and improved resistance to thixotropy over Nepheline Syenite. Thixotropy is the physical property in which the clay is a rock hard chunk and then goes too soft after you wedge it or throw with it, slumping and failing to hold it’s shape. This is caused by soluble salts in the feldspar that raise the pH of the water between the particles which, just like soap, lowers the surface tension of the water and thereby reduces the effectiveness of the suction between particles.
Nepheline Syenite, while reportedly a better melter and also very white, is very prone to thixotropy.

I really liked Kona F-4, but they have discontinued the mining of it, and although you can still find it, it’s a good idea to switch to something available for the future. There are basically just 4 choices to make in the feldspar realm nowadays. Custer Feldspar, Minspar 200 (formerly NC-4), G-200 HP aka “New G-200″ and Nepehline Syenite. Custer has always been a ubiquitous material in my experience. It has a yellowish color in the raw state and has impurities that cause it to fire a bit grey. Not the best choice when whiteness is an issue, and also it is more expensive than the others. Minspar is the main Soda Feldspar on the market now. According to sources like the Ceramic Material Database It is nearly identical to Kona F-4. G-200 HP is a new (and welcome) addition to the North American feldspar lineup, in that it previously was blended with NC-4 to create a middle-road between a Soda and a Potash Feldspar. They stopped doing it, and so the new G-200 H(igh) P(otassium) is more truly a potash feldspar. Custer is the one in the middle. You can blend G-200 HP and Minspar to get the old G-200 if you need to.

Testing Process

To mix these test, I first weigh out 2000g batches. This allows enough clay to test the shrinkage with test tiles, as well as how the clay performs when I make a pot out of it. Once weighed, the powder is dry-mixed and then water is added.

It is important to measure and record the amount of water used for two reasons: as an additional measurement of relative plasticity, and to help speed up the mixing process once a clay recipe has been chosen for use. Start by adding less than you think you need, and slowly add more water as you mix until the clay just barely comes together. It should be crumby and short at this point.

Wrap the clay in a plastic bag and let it sit for a couple days for the most accurate results in terms of workability.

The Results

I am quite thrilled with the new clay recipe and plan to use it for many years. I ended up with the following:

Campana Midrange Revised Cone 5-8
25 Grolleg Kaolin
10 C&C Ball Clay
10 Tile #6 Kaolin
35 Minspar 200 Feldspar
20 Silica 325 Mesh
2.5 Bentonite L-10 White

If you make things out of clay, chances are you’ve seen and used some pretty atrocious kiln shelves. Almost every kiln shelf I’ve seen has the same cracked, chipped, falling off, 5 layers deep kilnwash moonscape on it that threatens to ruin whatever is fired on top of or even underneath it. Especially with the vitreous porcelain I use, it is critical that the surface I fire on be perfectly flat and decently smooth. To this end, I have been researching and perfecting my kiln wash recipe so that it will stay on the kiln shelf, never crack, and apply very smoothly. Here’s what I’ve learned…

I began with John Britt’s Ceramics Monthly article on kiln wash, which was an excellent starting point. Basically, the gist of the article is that for some reason the most widely used recipe happens to be a really bad recipe. It shrinks excessively and as a result, peels up during the drying and firing, flaking off whenever the shelf is handled. Then you just fill in the places it flaked off of, only to compound the problem, resulting in a hopelessly thick, flaked, disasterpile kiln shelf. My favorite quote from this article goes like this: “Potter’s make a significant investment in their kiln shelves but rarely take more than a few minutes to mix up two scoops of kaolin and alumina to protect them. They also spend countless hours making and perfecting their work only to suffer unnecessary breakage and loss of pots because they just don’t know that a kiln wash doesn’t have to crack or fly off into the bottoms of pots.” Britt suggests that the simplest solution is to just replace some of the EPK with calcined kaolin thereby reducing the amount of shrinkage so hopefully the flakes stop occurring. So I mixed a batch that was:

25 EPK
25 Glomax
50 Alumina Hydrate

Which worked pretty well, but not perfectly. It needed better adhesion to the shelf, and small hairline cracks would occur in the valleys of the brush stokes. Also, I have a problem with brush stokes being there at all. They cause an uneven surface than can warp or even crack my pots if undue friction occurs between the shelf and the shrinking pot.

This is where I started to think that perhaps the solution would be to deflocculate, or disperse the kiln wash, making it crack less because it shrinks less (because deflocculated slurries require less water for the same viscosity), and will greatly improve the slurry’s brushing qualities allowing for a nice even coat. Have you ever noticed how kiln wash dries almost the moment it touches the kiln self, making it nearly impossible to make an even surface? Well, when you deflocculate the kiln wash, it remains a smooth, beautiful, wet puddle on the surface, almost like the shelf has been dipped in white chocolate.

Here is the recipe that I developed over the course of about 6 months and 15 or more firings. It now works perfectly and I see no need to improve upon it.

Campana Self-Leveling Kiln Wash (for all temps and atmospheres)

2500g EPK
2500g Glomax
5000g Alumina Hydrate

4250 ml Water
25g Darvan 7

First put the water in the bucket, then add the Darvan. Mix thoroughly with a drill mixer. Add the EPK and mix that in, then the Glomax, then the Alumina Hydrate. Mix for about 5 minutes. If you dip your hand with fingers spread and quickly remove it, the wash should web across the negative space while running off the fingers. Sieve it with a 60 mesh screen. Yeah, that’s right, I sieve my kiln wash. The whole point is to get a smooth surface.

I like to check the specific gravity of the mixture to make sure things stay consistent from batch to batch. The best way to do this is to use a Syringeto draw 50ml from the bucket. Squirt it into a cup that is on a scale which has been zeroed out with the cup on it. Weigh the slip. Mine weighs 86g. To get the specific gravity, or the g/ml density, just divide the 86g by the 50ml. That would mean that the specific gravity of my kiln wash is 1.72 g/ml.

Knowing this allows me to do some quality control and to repeat my results over and over again. If the specific gravity is too low, I know it needs less water, so I can add powder dry mix. If the wash is too thick, I can weigh it and see if I need to add water or just a few drops of Darvan to make it runnier.

Logging the specific gravity, by the way, is the BEST idea for glazes. Ever get that perfect thickness worked out only to not quite be able to repeat it? Specific gravity my friend, specific gravity. Write it on the side of the bucket, check it before you dip, never mess up another pot (or kilnload of pots) with a fresh bucket of your favorite glaze.

To apply the wash, you must first take every little bit of the inferior wash off the surface of the kiln shelf however you can. I will do another post on the best tools for this job, but for now, a scraper, a rub brick, an orbital sander, and an angle grinder are the best things to use. Get it down to the bare shelf surface. I started with brand new kin shelves this time, lucky me.

First get a large sponge very wet, almost dripping, and sponge off the surface to be washed. This not only removes dust and debris allowing better adhesion, but also slows the absorption of the kiln wash, which will be important for the self-leveling.

Immediately after you sponge, brush with your hand to remove the sponge leavin’s and apply the wash. I soak a medium sized, natural fiber, soft paint brush with wash and drizzle it, numerous brushes full.

The idea is to get a continuous puddle of wash to cover the whole thing. There should be enough that the wash stays wet on the surface for several minutes. Try to vary the direction of the brush movements. You’re done when the puddle is smooth and even.

Let it dry until it is no longer shiny on the surface.

Stand the shelf up on its edge and carefully sponge every last drip off of the edges, and make sure the bottom is totally clean as well. Carelessness in this part will almost certainly ruin some work by raining little white flecks onto the glaze below.

The number one rule is to NOT do this right before or as you are loading the kiln. Allow the wash to slowly and fully dry before firing. 2-3 days at least.

So you might be thinking right now that I’ve completely lost it. That this is just kiln wash, who cares? Who has time to be that meticulous? It is my thought that being meticulous and doing things right up front may take a bit or even a lot longer in the short term but in the long term it will save a LOT of time, and some major headaches or even crying sessions/temper tantrums. No scraping and chipping between firings, only if a glaze actually runs would there be any work to do. The even and uncracked surface is more effective and can withstand some serious puddles. No more losing pots to kiln wash flakes landing in them, no more losing pots from warpage and stress cracks caused by uneven surfaces. No more losing pots because the kiln wash peeled up and stuck to the underside of your pot.

Stay tuned for my development of spackling to full in places where the glaze took the kiln wash off. Now that I got this part figured out, that is my next project.

“As much as things change, they stay the same” couldn’t have been said better by my former teacher and now friend Randy Becker. A tour of my first studio last weekend brought back a rush of memories as the room itself remains uncannily familiar, essentially unchanged in the 12 years since I left. I am just returning from a trip up to Wisconsin to set up a solo exhibition at my old high school and thought I would share some images and a little bit of a background story about my initiation into the ceramic world.

I think I would have become a ceramic artist eventually, regardless of what my experiences were, as I have always been fascinated with clay. One of the first sentences I wrote back in first grade said “When I grow up I want to be a sculptor”. It was just my luck, however, that the public high school I attended had one of the best equipped and most successful high school ceramic art programs I’ve ever seen or heard of. This was at Verona Area High School, just outside Madison Wisconsin. Through some luck and a lot of hard work, determination, and community engagement, Becker was able to build this program over the years into what it is now – a rare and wonderful place for students, whether they want to become artists or not, to enjoy a creative endeavor. To take a break from the rest of it and solve some problems in a different way. Let’s take a tour shall we?

The main studio space has pretty much all the things a studio needs – 10 wheels, stacks of bats, buckets, slab roller/extruder, wedging tables, shelves, and work tables. Classes are split, with half working on tables, and half on wheels. Halfway through the semester the groups swap. I tried doing this with a class at IUS, and now have a much greater appreciation for what this requires of a teacher. One thing I remember quite well about my time in this studio was the visiting artists that came in and gave workshops. During my time there, I can remember such artists as David Dahlquist, Peter Hayes, Winthrop Byers, Bruce Breckenridge, and even Don Reitz coming by to give workshops. I never quite realized how amazing that was until I learned who all those people were later on in my education.

The glazing and firing situation at the studio was fantastic. Becker is an avid researcher of glazes, and accordingly equips the studio with a huge variety and quantity of glazes for cone 10 reduction AND oxidation. Some glazes work in both for different effects, and others work only in one or the other. I remember towards the end of my time there getting special permission to test my own glazes, and even got to mix up a bucket of my own.

In addition to these kilns pictured, students were invited and encouraged to participate in wood, salt, raku, and wood/salt firings at various studios in the area, including Randy’s own kilns. I remember a few incredible experiences hanging out stoking kilns with a bunch of local artists. A lot of my best work from high school came out of those firings.

If I didn’t keep myself busy making work, I would get sent to the mixing room to knock out a batch of clay. We were on the all-you-can-eat clay policy, which meant that the 100 plus students that used the room every day went through a couple batches, every day. I remember feeling sorry for the student teacher who seemed to be constantly running that thing.

In addition to the studio, the school has an art gallery. Local, national, and international artists show work throughout the semester. Collectors Colleen and Dennis Bindley would show part of their collection once per year. Once, Dennis came in to give a talk about the collection. He passed around a pot for us to handle. When it returned to his hands he told us that is was a Hans Coper piece worth about $30,000 at the time. He then told us the legendary story of Coper and Lucie Rie. That experience is seared into my mind now, never to be forgotten.

At the present moment, my own show is up in that gallery. Being a homecoming experience, I decided to make the show partially retrospective. The center of the gallery shows my current body of work while the perimeter houses work made while I was in high school, with a few pieces from various stages of my development through undergraduate and graduate school to bridge the gap.

This pitcher and cup set, a prized possession of my parents, was made during my senior year of high school. It was fired in Becker’s wood/salt kiln on his friend Don Hunt’s land. I went out there with a couple friends and hung out stoking the kiln with a some locaI artists and UW Madison students. It came out quite nice, so Becker shot a slide of it and entered it into a show – the First Annual K-12 Exhibition at NCECA, in Dallas. Don Reitz, the juror for that show, awarded it with the best of show, pretty much finalizing my choice to become a ceramic artist as a career. My friend Shannon Sullivan, who graduated with me, was also awarded an honorable mention. She is now an accomplished ceramic artist and tenured professor at the College of the Redwoods in California. We are just two of the dozens of professional artists, teachers and graduate students to come out of this program.

One thing I really love about Becker is that he says we were the easy ones. His real work is with the students he knows wouldn’t come to school at all if not for the ceramics class. He reminded me over lunch that teaching is a lot more than just sharing skills. A good teacher will help others become better people, and maybe on the side the students will learn something about clay. Even today, he is still my teacher.

I conceived of and built this tile bat system nearly 10 years ago while an undergrad at the University of Wisconsin Whitewater. At the time, I had a few major problems to solve, and as they say, necessity is the mother of invention. I needed bats, and lots of them. The studio at UWW did not provide bats, you had to get your own. I had a few plasti-bats and a few other assorted brands and materials. I didn’t really like any of them. The Plasti-bats would jiggle on the pins, slowly growing the holes and making elliptical pots – unacceptable. The Creative Industries injection molded ones were better, but had deeply grooved undersides that would latch on to any sort of studio debris, and as a porcelaineophile working in a mixed-clay studio, that didn’t work so well. Little chunks of stoneware kept finding their way into my clay via the undersides of these bats. I had a couple masonite bats. I shouldn’t even have to explain why those weren’t working. The particle board bat I had develped a lump of waterlogged swollen fragile wood right in the middle. I did not want to pour plaster bats, as they would be very hard to keep from wrecking my and everyone else’s work from the inevitable lime pops associated with plaster dust finding it’s way into the clay. So anyway, from all these bats I had purchased, I knew what I DIDN’T like. Then I started thinking about what I wanted out of my bats.

Having limited space, as all students do, I wanted maximum shelf utilization. How often to we really need the full 13 inches of diameter? I wanted a material that would not have the possibility of warping or flexing. Even way back then, I had already lost many pots to the bat flexing as it was removed from the wheelhead and thereby warping the pot on top of it. I wanted to be able to have more bats than I would ever need to use, so that I would never be forced to stop working early or be tempted to flip a pot too early just so I could keep making work. I also was quite poor, so couldn’t afford to shell out a few hundred bucks to make that happen with 10 dollar bats. I finally decided to throw on tiles, which have all the things I want, and none of the problems I had experienced with other bats. I used a couple of my old plasti-bats to make the holder.

I started by purchasing the tiles. I simply drove to the Menard’s store in Janesville to see what was on hand. I found VersaTile 8 inch unglazed quarry tile. These are the kind of tiles you would do a patio in, not a kitchen, as they have a textured and porous surface, not the easiest thing to clean. For my purposes, however, they were perfect. The texture helps the clay grab on. The porosity sucks the clay on, and even promotes even drying through absorption while the pot is still attached, although not as effectively as plaster. At the time, they were a mere $.50 each. I purchased 30 of them to start, all for the price of one or maybe two other bats.

Then I had to figure out how to mount the tiles on the wheel and keep them centered.

I noticed that the thickness of one tile was almost exactly that of two plasti-bats, so I went ahead and epoxied the two plasti-bats together, planning to cut a tile-sized hole in them to accept the tiles. I put the new 2-ply bat on the wheel and then centered a tile on top of that. Once it was perfectly alligned, I carefully traced it with a scribe, and cut out the middle with a jigsaw. I cut the hole slightly too small and then filed and sanded it to fit perfectly. I then cut a notch into it so that I could use a screwdriver to pry the tiles up to get them off the wheel.

I use these tiles to throw pretty much everything except plates and platters. For those I use my stockpile of Creative Industries plastic bats. Even my largest bowls have a footprint smaller than 8 inches across, so this works perfectly even for those.

When throwing, I use 4 small chunks of soft clay to level the tile with the bats. I place them in the corners and then smack them down. I do this once per session. The clay will hold until it becomes either bone dry or waterlogged.

In the decade since I made this system, I have had no problems. The tiles are now perhaps a bit jiggly, but I’ve learned to apply the right kind of pressure while throwing so that they do not wiggle any more. I have only broken a few of the tiles over the years, and have been able to buy replacements at Lowe’s and Home Depots in Indiana and Kentucky as needed. It has proven to be a worthwhile investment of one afternoon, a long, long, time ago.

Questions/comments?

I have been trying to really refine my teapot form lately. It is a very nice challenge to work around. For me, even though it is unlikely anyone would have the courage to actually use it, it must perform exceptionally well. I use the requirements of physics to direct my choices. The venturi effect spout shape, a 45 degree angle for drip prevention, a spout tip slightly higher than the interior lip of the body, a handle pulled in close to the body, and a handle-based lid latch are all part of the design.

I begin with a leather hard body, which I proceed to dissect in a swooping, graceful pattern.

In this new style, I’m going for a cut pattern similar to leaves, both as bunches and as singular detailed forms at the same time, ambiguously bouncing between the two. From the chaos, I make order.

Now, to alter the spout. I split it and then stick it back together.

I make a built in tea filter, which I drill by hand using a drill bit. I just eyeball it. After the holes are made, I rotate the back end of the drill bit to widen and compress the holes.

I attach the spout, lining up the split with the line on the teapot form.

Next, the lid gets it’s knob put in.

Finally, a handle is added, here’s the final form.

Thanks for checking this out. Your comments and questions are welcome.

During week three, I took a much needed vacation up to Wisconsin to reset my brain before the school year kicked in. Todd and Reese powered on for another gruesome week of hard labor in high heat. The flash flood that occurred on campus turned our whole inside studio into a biohazard, as sewage backed up a full two inches deep throughout the building! As I write this about 2 months after the event, the building is still not quite back to normal yet.

After the arch was finished, we built the chimney. With several corbels, it was tricky, but went quickly nonetheless. After that, we made the insulative coating, made of two inches of kaowool and a 1000 pounds of hand mixed combination of 1 part portland cement, 1 part fireclay, 3 parts sand. this took much longer, was much messier, and harder than we had anticipated. In the places where we did not hustle enough, there are now cracks that have formed. The fence material used as rebar ended up wanting to poke through in places. It was a clumsy process I’d rather not experience again.

After the coating went on and set, Todd and Reese finished the chimney. A long and arduous process of lifting hundreds of bricks up a ladder to the roof began, and after a few days, they got the chimney complete. Once that was done, the whole kiln got reinforced with steel angle iron. Here’s a few pics of what the finished kiln looks like from a few angles.

Questions/comments?

The day after I posted last time, we built the entire arch and cast the giant keystone all in a single long day. The form was put perfectly in place and the bricks were carefully laid. First, we stacked what we thought would work. We used combination of “straights” or regular firebricks, “#1 arches” or bricks that are tapered slightly on one side, and #2 arches” bricks with a more sever taper and thinner profile. The combination is methodically tweaked to find the perfect order of bricks, leaving no open slits on the inside or outside. As we worked, we found that the height of the high-temp mortar between the bricks altered the order and types of bricks needed to properly build the arch.

Something specific to the Manabigama design, the arch is not quite a parabolic arch, it is an arch that is slightly flattened at the top to accommodate the stacking space needs inside the kiln. Regular catenary or parabolic arches distribute the weight of the bricks naturally to a near-vertical slope. This allows them to stand and support weight without any external support structure. We are a little apprehensive of this alteration, and had discussed that if we did it over, we might consider altering the plans to a sprung arch of approximately the same dimensions, as it would improve the stacking space and also be a lot easier to build, while allowing us to hang a swinging door easily to the front, rather than a door that must be re-stacked every time we fire. It would not have that iconic Manabigama look to it though, something like a prairie schooner or a classic red hip-roofed barn, a very American image.

As we stacked the walls, we were very careful to keep each course of bricks level, and tightly stacked against the form. Every once in a while, I would try to “look into the future” by stacking a combination of bricks to get the arch figured out. I was amazed by how many variations we went through strictly based on the mortar height issue. As we approached the top, we discovered that my side was slightly off plumb, and so Todd put his wood floor polishing experience to use and used the angle grinder to correct the shape. FYI, a masonry disc just eats through firebrick, good to know.

Once the walls were built up to their last course, we cut a couple end caps and put down some plastic. The arch form, bricks, and end caps form a mold for the keystone. The keystone is made out of a castable refractory material, basically a super-high temp concrete. Once cured, this keystone is what makes the arch work. Downward gravitational force is distributed outward and then downward through the shape of the arch.

Once the key has cured, the process of removing the form is done carefully and methodically. It must be dropped down slowly and then pulled out straight and level so it does not jostle or push into the arch at any point. We stacked some bricks and ran a plank, which was carefully leveled with shims, to slide the form out upon.

Stay tuned for the next segment, the completion of the kiln!

Comments/Questions?

I am currently on a hiatus from making work. That does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that I am not very busy. The current project is the construction of a new wood kiln at the University of Louisville, where I teach. After more than month of planning and some very in depth investigations, Todd Burns decided that for our program, the Manabigama design would be the best choice. I agreed.

The Manabigama is a new and highly popular kiln design, the brainchild of John Thies and Bill Van Gilder. These kilns are springing up all over the country for their practicality in the group studio, educational, and workshop settings. Basically a miniaturized and super-powered anagama kiln, the Manabigama apparently reaches target temperature with ease, has highly directional firing effects, and is small enough that a single person could make enough work to fill it regularly, and a class can do a single assignment and fire it as a group. It uses very little wood in woodkiln standards, about a cord per firing.

We began construction of our new kiln on Tuesday. We have gotten some help from a number of our students, as well as some local potters and students from a neighboring university, IU Southeast, and my friend Ryan Shortridge from Bloomington. We have been chugging along and making good – but meticulously careful – progress. Sore from head to toe only a few days into the build, I will not soon forget how much labor it takes to build one of these things.

So far, we have laid the cinder block to make the foundation the right shape for the kiln, then put in the firebox (where the wood will actually be burning), the floor of the kiln, and have constructed a form to build the arch around. Each of these things has taken twice the time we had planned. Both Todd and I are quite anal retentive with everything concerning craftsmanship, and hold firmly to the belief that things we make can only be perfect. As with making art, it takes however long it takes to do it right, no half-assing anything just to save time or energy.

Perhaps my favorite thing about this new kiln we are building is that it is right out the back door and will be totally covered by our kiln pad roof!

More updates to come…