Atmospheric Firing
The oldest known pottery discovered in China is believed to be approximately 20,000 years old. Other early Neolithic and pre-Neolithic pottery has been found in the Russian Far East from 14,000 BCE, in Japan from 10,500 BCE, in Sub-Saharan Africa from 9,400-7,000’s BCE and in the Middle East from 7,000-6,000’s BCE
For most of ceramic history, wood-burning kilns have been used to vitrify clay, a word that comes from Latin vitrum meaning glass. Vitrification turns clay that is otherwise fragile and brittle into durable, waterproof functional wares.
While electric kilns were developed in the 20th century, creating an environment rich in oxygen (a friing process known as 'oxidation firing'), the wood burning kilns used for millenia and more recent gas kilns both have a live flame to create reduction firing where is not enough oxygen as the flames burn up what is available, the fire seeks oxygen in glazes and in the clay body itself, transforming the colour and texture into beautiful and irreproducible works of art.
Much of my work is wood fired and soda fired which produces beautiful unique pieces touched by the path of the flame and ash and other factors of how the clay interacts with the atmosphere of the kiln. The work from these firings is fully functional pottery that is food safe and water tight. I also enjoy other atmospheric techniques such as smoke, obvara and raku which can produce food safe wares (so long as certain ingredients in glazes are avoided) but they are not water tight - they can be used for storing dried foods such as tea leaves, coffee grounds or dried herbs.
You can read more about different atmospheric firing techniques their historical uses around the world and see examples of each method in the gallery booklet I created from our first The Art of Atmospheric Fire show (winter 2024) available here, an annual gallery show I curated for the first one in the Winter 2024 featuring local ceramic artists celebrating atmospheric firing in the Cowichan Valley on Vancouver Island.
