John Baymore's 

On Woodfiring

Woodfiring is a seductive, magical procedure that allows the potter to directly influence the surface of the pieces during the time the ware is subject to the immense heat of the firing. Woodfiring is about constant involvement and decisions; choice of wood species, age since cutting, rhythm and timing of stokes, amount of air, size of pieces, and the location they are tossed within the chamber. These all directly influence the final outcome. No other heat source keeps the potter so intimately involved in this final, crucial phase of the production of ceramic pieces.

The mark of the wood fire is distinct, persistent, and cannot be achieved in any other way. Wood provides more than just heat. Volatile resins in the wood produce long sinuous flames that play through the stacking of ware, leaving behind scorches and fused ash deposits. The potter, in stacking the kiln, has chosen where to leave channels in the kiln to promote this flow and how to position the pieces to interact with it. The flame caresses the forms, enhancing the shapes as it flows around them like water through a rock-strewn stream bed. In the raging inferno there is a gentle quality, as the flame caresses the pots.

On glazed wares woodfiring imparts subtle localized changes as wood ash floating with the draft fuses into the melting glass. As the kiln is stoked it creates bursts of flame that ebb and flow like the tide, creating subtle layering of color and depth within the glaze. Colors blush from one tone to another, and surfaces go from matt to gloss to semi-matt. These glazed pieces provide endless hours of discovery as they are lived with and used.

It is on unglazed surfaces that the wood fuel is perhaps at it's best. The raw clay is highly receptive to woodfire's marks, and the natural earth qualities of the clay mesh perfectly with the primal effects of the flame and ash. The primeval elements of the ancients, "Earth, Water, Air, and Fire", are clearly present. Unglazed pieces decorated with flyash and marks from coals are undeniably born of the earth..... geologic, metamorphic, natural. Yet in their form, they are clearly manipulated and controlled by high human touch and vision.

Because of the myriad variables, the woodfiring process is fraught with difficulties. Many things can go wrong. Yet in the very nature of this risk, there is the possibility of serendipitous event! Those who fire with wood accept both this risk and embrace this opportunity to work as a partner and collaborator with the fire, rather than trying to impose their total will over it.

     It is a symbiotic relationship..... the potter and the forces of nature. In this pattern of working, many pieces are lost so that many others are born with gifts of rare, quiet beauty to be enjoyed by those open to it's magical visual effects.

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This page last updated:

04/13/2006 12:48 PM