Careful maintenance kept the temperature up to around 1300C, what they called soaking for about half an hour and then cooling down to 1100 and reducing again. This brought about the magic to the glazes, changing colours and giving a deep rich look to the pieces and turning soft clay to stone, permanent and forever.
It was time to stop the firing and let the furnace die down. Once we had shut off the engine a deep silence fell, our ears ringing from the constant sound continuous for hours. We wandered our way back up the path in the dark carrying torches. As I looked out from the path I noticed little eerie green lights in amongst the grass stems. What on earth were those? Little pin prick talismans glowing bright in the dense dark night. Michael said, they were glow worms and that they glow to attract a mate. I was spell bound, it was awe inspiring and it gave a real mystical and special magic to this little green dell. You can easily see why people in the past really believed in faeries.
When we got into the warm kitchen with our dirty blackened faces, Denis went and got the whisky and we toasted the firing hoping that all would be well. Time would tell, as we now had to be patient and wait until the kiln cooled down.
Two days later and we trekked down to the kiln, with trepidation and anxious to see how the pots had faired. Mike and I started to unprize the bricks and clear the kiln door. We all peered in to the dark still warm blackness. There was a smell of fire, charcoal and oil as we looked to see the ranks of kiln shelves appearing out of the gloom. The hot pots were sitting innocently waiting to be hauled out and carefully mused over. They appeared at first glance to be none the worse for their descent into hell and back, a baptism of fire.
We couldn’t wait and had to be careful to slowly pull each pot out one by one, shelf by shelf. Some we joyously looked and marvelled at, the magic of the fire. Others were not so good and a bit disappointing. One or two hadn’t survived and cracked, or stuck to the kiln shelf, glazes not fully reduced, our faces etched with pain at all the hard work to get them this far. Denis, philosophically, said there are always successes and failures and you had to accept the legacy of the fire.
Once the all the pots were out and fully scrutinised and considered and pawed over, we took them into the pottery and began to sort them out. The charge of energy, now dissipated and we felt somewhat deflated. We were now back in the “real” world and everything appeared less bright, a little ordinary and “run of the mill”
I couldn’t wait though to do it all again, I was hooked and I rode home with a small collection of my first real stoneware pots.
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