Our first scheduled firing for the Painting With Smoke
workshop was a wash!! When we finally managed to find a day
without rain it was well worth the wait. The photos below give
just a glimpse into the world of alternative fired pottery
techniques.  We used two 55 gallon steel drums (with holes
drilled for air flow) and packed our pieces in amongst sawdust,
hay, salt, copper carbonate and iron oxide. We rushed the
smoking because we were crunched for time and were losing
the light of day!

Bisque fired work
decorated with terra
sigellata and colored
engobes awaits the
application of resist
materials before being
smoke fired.

Students prepare
their pots for the 55
gallon drums by
using an array of
organic materials
and resists
including: masking
tape, hay, colored
magazine paper,
horsehair, feathers,
clay, leaves etc.

The pieces are loaded into
the drums and surrounded
by sawdust and hay. The
sawdust is then ignited with
newspaper and once it is
sufficiently lit, the drums are
covered to encourage a
slow smoldering smoky
atmosphere.

The sawdust takes
a few hours to burn
down to the pots at
the bottom of the
drum. Darkness
was upon us when
this photo was
taken. The colors of
the flames were
brilliant blues and
pinks!

The pots are then carefully lifted out of the drums. In a best
case scenario the drums cool off by themselves and the
pieces are unloaded by hand but because we were racing
sundown we used water to carefully cool down the drums
enough to unload.

While we waited for the
drums to fire, we fired some
individual pots in smaller
containers and used hand
held blow torches to achieve
slightly more controlled
results.

The pots are rinsed off to remove
debris and then polished with wax to
give them a sheen.  We had some very
interesting an lovely results!