What do you do when you have lots of fresh off the wheel pottery but no kiln? Pit fire! It’s the original method of baking clay and how it’s been done for tens of thousands of years. Fortunately, we have access to an acreage outside of the city to build our pit at, because it’s a fire that produces lots of smoke at the start and needs to slowly burn overnight.
We fill the bottom with sawdust, newspaper and the unbaked pottery and then place wood on top. The fire begins quite large and then burns down to the deep layers to cook the pottery pieces. Sawdust is great to use because it is dense and burns slowly. Needless to say, the results were spectacular! Such a raw and organic look and even though it’s about a 40% success rate (there was lots of breakage) I think it’s so worth it for the pieces that make it and I think we will only get better results as we continue to bake!