GreenFire

Fall Firings

2011-11-09T03:48:00.000-08:00

Fall firings have begun! Last week, kusakabe-sensei fired for a total of 23 hours. He candled with propane, starting at 8 pm. We are unsure whether they started wood at 1am or 4am - we will confirm later today.

Most of the work will be shown at Keiko Gallery this month. Results were great, although damage was high as sensei fired many green pots and had many cracks.

We will post more about this second firing, which Nora started this morning at 4:30am.

Images, as promised...

2010-12-07T05:51:00.000-08:00

Great photos from Briana, one of our senior potters:

Our three senior woodfire adventurers...

Nora - the intrepid leader...

Maybe we'll get some images of the work that comes out next...

Fall Firings

2010-12-06T11:18:00.000-08:00

This fall, we had a number of firings. Nobles fired twice, introducing a dedicated group of high school students to woodfiring. Nora led a group of 3 seniors and 2 middle schoolers through a wonderful semester of working and firing. Photos will be posted soon.

In early November, Wayne Feurst led a workshop out of the Harvard Ceramics Program and fired GreenFire for about 12 hours. Hopefully, Wayne will get us some photos as well!

First Firing of the 2010

2010-03-19T05:18:00.000-07:00

Nora started the firing around 6am. We decided to keep the temp low for a bit, especially compared to how the Adventure Firing went in the fall (at cone 8 in 4 hours!). We were worried about the residual moisture from the winter plus we had an enormous amount of rain in the previous 4 days (where yesterday we candled with propane for about six hours and we had good sunshine).

8:30 we were at 400 and transferred the fire from ashpit to fire box. This kept temp holding for an hour as it adjusted.

11:00 1000

12:00 1500

1:45 2000

3:30 2300

4:30 sidestoking

5:15 Cone 11 soft

7:00 stopped feeding wood - monitored cooling

8:00 mudded it up

We are opening it up today and will post some pictures of the results. We will probably try and reload today so that I can fire again next week - Nora will be in South Carolina on a crew trip but we have so much work we can do it again. I want to get another one done before heading to NCECA and another wood firing with Bruce Dehnert...

Loading Complete

2010-03-13T03:59:00.000-08:00

The kiln is loaded and we are just waiting for good weather to fire. Some of the prep work we did this week: unpacked the curtains, swept out the chambers, chiseled some of the floor (it had some wadding and leftover soda ash from the last firing) and kiln washed the entire ware chamber.

I wrote about some of the pieces on the Sabbaticalist. We will probably fire on Tuesday next.

She Awakens!

2010-03-08T09:53:00.000-08:00

This week is about preparation for the first firing of the spring. Wednesday, we will take down the curtains, prep the floor and walls, split some wood. Thursday, we will load and preheat. Friday we fire!

We'll get some new photos up as the week progresses...

The Kiln is Covered

2010-01-14T13:41:00.001-08:00

Wood is covered as well as you can see. We should be in good shape for the spring. Nora and Betsy prepped wood today - hopefully it will become a standard Thursday thing. Starting this early, we could easily have a couple of cords ready by March!

Winter Photos

2009-12-21T08:42:00.001-08:00

Here's the wood we did not use the fall firings. We have about 2 cords of hardwood and 3 cords of softwood. The eaves obviously did not provide adequate protection for this amount of snow!

Obviously, the kiln did not get wrapped before this storm! Grrrrrr! Hopefully, we'll get some warm days to get rid of the snow and get this baby wrapped!

Putting the Kiln to bed

2009-12-20T11:42:00.000-08:00

Nora and I met with Joe to figure out how best to winterize GreenFire. We'll post some photos once it is all wrapped up like a present. Major snowstorm today (12 inches!). I'll take a trek over to the site to see how it's doing...

Adventure Firing Unloading

2009-11-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

Here's part of the crew at the opening of the kiln after our short "Adventure Firing". Added wood ash to the fire box, soda ash to the side stokes. 10 hours of firing.
We noticed soda build-up on the underside of the roof. We will protect the roof (and walls and floor!) next time and into the future...
The firing revealed beautiful orange and rust tones where the wood ash blushed the clay. Soft grays and whites formed when it built up.
Beautiful green jewel tones were created where the soda ash was allowed to build up. This is an extreme example, but nonetheless shows what so many of the pieces were kissed with. We are excited to fire in this way next spring. We will probably put the kiln to bed for the winter, although there is a possibility of one more firing...

Adventure Firing!

2009-11-16T06:45:00.001-08:00

The kiln is cooling now after our "Guinness" day of adventure firing. This was the 4th firing of the kiln in two weeks and we tried a number of different things. We fired in about the shortest time possible (7am until 5pm). We introduced wood ash into the firebox periodically. We introduced soda ash into the side stoke holes in the last couple of hours. Here is a shot of our mix of sawdust, soda ash, and hot water being ladled onto flat wood.
Wayne Fuerst loading the soda into the side stoke hole.

We'll unload tomorrow and see the results!

Raku Day at GreenFire

2009-11-16T06:35:00.000-08:00

Steven Branfman came by to check out our 3rd firing. Here's an image of his pots being slowly introduced into the raku chamber. We had already taken some pots out and we were in the middle of the wood fire. We warmed up his tea bowls by placing them in the pizza oven for 15 minutes, then sitting them on sill of the raku chamber, and then we slowly pushed them in on thin soft-brick "boats". We then bricked up the chamber, and left them in for about half an hour. They turned out beautiful!
Great shot of Steven and Masakazu in front of the fire door!

Images from the unloading - Firing #2

2009-11-10T09:05:00.000-08:00

This shot is from the floor, the passage way from the ash pit to the main chamber.

This is a view of the 3rd shelf, about halfway down the chamber. You can see the small niches on the left, just under the chimney. We got great flashing, ashmelt, and movement in just 13 hours! We are loading today for the 3rd firing, which we will fire for more time, perhaps 30 hours or so. More updates to come.

Second Firing Cool Down

2009-11-08T07:17:00.000-08:00

The kiln is cooling down at the moment. Unloading is scheduled for 3pm tomorrow.

A pretty incredible experience yesterday - Firing took a total of 14 hours. Started up with small pieces of wood at 9am. Hit cone 10 around 3pm. Kept stoking for a couple of hours, added in side stokes around 6:30 pm. Ended around 10 pm. Checked the cooling and fully shut down at 11pm.

This is an incredible kiln that could easily be fired by two people, if everything is prepped ahead of time. We'll have picture of the results tomorrow.

Dedication was a success!

2009-11-03T10:00:00.000-08:00

It was a wonderful evening, full of words, music, tea, and fire. A description of the event is posted on the Nobles webpage.

http://www.nobles.edu/home/news_item.asp?id=526

We were really happy with how the evening went and want to thank all who came. The ceremonial lighting turned into the first firing and we worked through the night. The kiln climbed really well but plateaued at 800 C, with the wood we were using. Fortunately, I had about a cord of very dry wood at home. We filled up a truck and brought some over. Kiln climbed beautifully after that, easily reaching 1300 C a couple of hours after that (around 11am).

Warren Mackenzie, who has shows at Lacoste Gallery and at the Fuller Craft Museum, stopped by late morning to check out Kusakabe's design. It was wonderful to meet him and his wife - such nice people!

Green Fire Collaboration- Nobles and Harvard

2009-10-29T07:39:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Green Fire blog where we will be bringing you the on going story of the Nobles and Harvard kiln building collaboration. This summer ceramic artist Masakuza Kusakabe conducted a workshop where participants helped build his innovative smokeless wood kiln. This Sunday the kiln with be dedicaded in Makoto Yabe's honor. Makoto taught at both schools for many years and the impact he left as an educator lives on in this new project.