What a kiln returns
What a kiln returns.
A firing has a beginning, a middle, and an end the studio cannot see. The beginning is the loading of the kiln, which is a slow puzzle, because pieces of different sizes and glaze families sit at slightly different ideal heights, and the work the kiln is going to do depends on where everything sits. The middle is the ramp: hours of climbing temperature, a soak at peak, a slow descent. The end is the unloading the next morning, after the kiln has cooled to a temperature the hand can read, and the door is opened, and the studio sees what the fire decided.
The planter in the photograph above is the easy version of this story, because the kiln agreed with the artist. The wall thickness held; the foot did not crack; the matte glaze fell into the recesses of the coils and stayed thin on the high points, which is what the glaze was selected to do. A studio that has been at this for a while learns to expect the easy version, and to take it without comment when it comes.
The harder version is more interesting. A copper recipe pulled in two directions in the same firing this week. On one shoulder of one platter it precipitated into iron specks across the field, which is the surface the studio likes that recipe for. On the opposite shoulder it stayed almost smooth. Same glaze, same firing, same temperature curve, two surfaces. The platter kept the iron specks; the rest of it kept the smooth. The piece is the piece.
Same glaze, same firing, same temperature curve, two surfaces. The platter kept the iron specks; the rest of it kept the smooth.
A working ceramic studio either accepts what the kiln returns or pretends it can control it. The pretending studios sand and re-glaze and re-fire until the piece looks the way the brochure said it would. We do not do that here. The reason is partly philosophical and partly practical. Philosophically, a hand-built piece in a vintage glaze is, by definition, in conversation with two things the artist did not invent: a recipe written by someone else, and a fire the artist does not run. Practically, the pieces that come out of that conversation are the pieces collectors keep on shelves where they can see them every day. The pieces that have been sanded and re-fired into uniformity are the pieces that end up in cabinets, behind glass, in rooms nobody uses.
There is a Japanese phrase the studio uses for this, which by now most of the regular readers know: Shouganai. It cannot be helped. We bring the preparation. The kiln returns the rest. The pieces that come back are the pieces that are for sale.
If you read the Shop page after a firing, you will sometimes see pieces appear that were not on it the week before, and pieces leave that were on it the week before. The schedule is the firing schedule, not the algorithm. The next firing is the next firing. We will see what the fire returns.
