WOOD/SALT CLAY

Firing with wood is a fabulous exhausting experience and can add huge richness to the pots. All my Cornish wood kilns have been of the ‘fast-fire’ type taking about 12 hours to fire to aound 1250C – much faster than the Anagama wood kiln I first encountered in Japan which took a full 5 days! At 1200C up to 9kg of cooking salt is gradually introduced through the fireboxes which vapourises and reacts with the pots as it gets pulled through the kiln. This combination of fly ash and salt attack can do lovely things to the pots with massive variation within the kiln and often across each piece.