A Tale of Fire and Stone

NH Potters' Guild "Nakamagama" (community wood-fired kiln)

Since starting to learn pottery last year, the area of the craft that has fascinated me the most has been wood-firing. Aside from the millennia-long tradition, the effects you can get in the environment of a wood-fired kiln are so hard to obtain any other way and just have a dynamism few other methods can match. On top of that is the unpredictability of the results, so there's something of an element of magic and ancient alchemy to it.

My first opportunity to participate in a community wood-firing was this past June with the New Hampshire Potters' Guild as part of the 2025 New England Wood Firing Conference, organized by https://www.trevoryoungberg.com. It was an amazing experience, and I feel like I've found a lovely community with the NH guild. We just finished up a fall firing last week, and I came out of it with some really nice pieces I'm planning to offer for sale at New York Sheep and Wool Festival next weekend.

The bottom two photos of the gallery below are of a bowl I made from wild clay I dug out of the creek bank on our family property in South Carolina last March. This is especially exciting because most wild clays would just melt in the 2200+ºF environment of a kiln like this. It's still relatively porous and probably won't be appropriate for most functional wares, but it came out so beautiful that I'm definitely going to use it for more artistic pieces.