How to build a kiln in just 4 days!

Welcome back to blog land! We have been off the air for a little while due to computer crash, but we're back on line and ready to go! It's a fortnight since my return from the UK, and lots has been going on, but before any of that I need to review Steve Tootells kiln building project in North Wales.

In earlier blogs you will find a layer by layer description of the building of Laura Inoues kiln in Nagano, and a series about the kiln building workshop in Mashiko. Every project is different, and it is important to be flexible. With great thanks to David Frith and Steve Tootell, the kiln shed was built, the floor was beautifully flat and level, and all the building materials were on site ready. The only foundations that needed to be finished were under the chimney, and Daniel, Nicola and I finished that off first thing on the first day, so that the chimney could be started on day two.

Steve did the first layer of bricks dry with bricks that had a channel underneath. This will allow air to get underneath the kiln, reducing heat stress on the slab during the firing and preventing moisture build up between firings.

The next few layers of hard fire bricks up to the fire grate was the same as the other kilns, save that David has a brick cutting machine! The proportions of this kiln is 6 brick lengths deep and 6.75 brick lengths wide. The three quarter brick length is the width of the exit flue. By careful cutting and laying of the bricks only six bricks need to be cut for the second layer, then one brick per layer after that.

Fire clay was used instead of mortar. I prefer fire clay to mortar, as mortar sticks the brick together too hard, making repair to the kiln difficult later, and it dries very quickly making adjustments during brick laying difficult. I find fire clay is better, and usually cheaper. The main objective is not so much to bond the brick together as with a brick building, but to fill any gaps between the bricks and seal the kiln. A metal frame is set around the kiln to give mechanical support to the kiln, and the kiln needs to flex to accommodate expansion and contraction during firing. Mix the fire clay into a large container of water using a glaze mixer and you can adjust the mixture thickness as you go. When it is the consistency of thick custard that should be fine. the bricks can then be dipped into this mixture and laid directly. The fire clay should only be about one or two millimetres thick between layers. If you find that there are variations in brick size a thicker mixture can be made by adding fine grog to the fire clay and this can then be used to make a thicker layer of mortar where necessary.

The first real challenge was the fire grate. In japan I use "I" shaped kiln props on their edge for the fire grate, but these are not available in the UK. A metal fire grate could be used, but it burns out fairly quickly, meaning extra running cost, and can cause iron spotting on the pots.

Our solution was to use thick cylindrical kiln props, which Steve had acquired from Stoke on Trent, on their side, set through the wall so that they can be replaced if necessary by sliding new ones in from the outside. We decided to finish work on the first day after the fire grate was finished.

Our next big challenge was the kiln floor. Double length bricks are apparently unavailable in the UK, so to bridge the fire boxes and make the kiln floor we had to use one and a half length bricks. That is in fact the exact width of the fire box so we made a step of one eighth brick each side on the layer below and corbelled the floor layer.

The outer walls and chimney were then constructed, regularly checking for squareness and level. The walls of this kiln are in fact lower than the kilns of this design that I have previously built. That is because the arch bricks for this kiln had been taken from an old kiln and we intended to use the original arch former. As that arch was deeper, we made the walls lower so that the top of the inside arch was the same height as my original kiln design, and so the inside volume and flame flow would be the same. Day two finished when we had finished the outside walls and the chimney damper.

On day three we filled the inside walls of the kiln with insulating fire brick. These are laid dry, that is without fire clay, so that they can slide against each other as they expand and contract in the firing with cracking. This means however that the there will be a slight height difference between the inside and the outside wall equivalent to the outside walls fire clay thickness. This gap is filled by cutting bricks on the inside wall to come up level with the outside wall.

A soldier course of bricks laid side by side on top of that, bridging both layers, ties the wall together and gives a solid base from which to spring the arch. The rest of day three was spent re welding the metal frame, which must be attached to the kiln before the arch goes on.

On day four we addressed the arch. The original arch former had shrunk over the years so a new arch former was made by Nicola and Daniel. A frame was constructed underneath the arch former so that when the bricks had been placed the frame could be collapsed and the arch former just drop out.

The place in Czech where the Seko twins work has a long history of ceramics, and the kiln builders there do not interlock the arch bricks, thus avoiding horizontal stress on the arch and eliminating cracking across the joints. So, we tried that method on this kiln. We also made the arch shorter, so that the kiln door could be butted up against it instead of trying to fit bricks under the arch every firing.

Once the arch was up we filled in the back wall, sealed the outside of the arch with fire clay, then a layer of ceramic fibre.

On top of the fibre will spread a thin layer of refractory adobe, then a layer of metal reinforcing mesh and the a thick layer of adobe. The adobe was made from fire clay, grog, sand, cement, sawdust and vermiculite, mixed with water to a soft workable consistency. Daniel and Nicola finished the chimney and we put up the chimney frame.

Lo and behold, an elegant and most excellent kiln!

Throughout the whole process, our support team, Jane Tootell and Nicola's fiance Ina, provided us with delicious vittles, excellent coffee and copious amounts of the fuel necessary for any great endeavour, beer!

Everyone was so happy and contented they even laughed at my endless stream of jokes. Without our support team none of this would have been possible.

ODYN GAN IWAN

Since July 1st I have been in Denbigh, North Wales in the UK building and firing one of my kilns with Steve Tootell. The site was provided by David and Margaret Frith, and Nicola and Daniel Seko from the Czech Republic flew across to help. Nicola and Daniel have already built one of these kilns at their own studio in Czech, so their experience helped to make the kiln go up lickety split!

Michael Warner was also scheduled to come down from the Isle of Mull, but his fiance, Kate, has gone into hospital for some long awaited surgery, and we all hope that everything has gone well. Our thoughts go out to you both.

I have been battling with jet lag since getting back on the weekend, and trying to catch up with myself, so for now just check out the quick video of the kiln building. I will put up some detailed photos of the whole process in days to come.

"Odyn gan Iwan" incidentally is the title which Steve has given the kiln. It is welsh for "The kiln that Euan built".

The week that was.

This last week has been hectic. On monday the Japanese pottery magazine "Tsukuru Toujiro" came to photograph and interveiw for the August issue. They are dedicating six pages to me and my coffee mugs.

My studio normally feels too small, but with the back drops and camera equipment it was like potting in a shoebox.

I finished the mugs ( all 200 of them), handled, dried, glazed and fired them by Saturday. I had to fire by then so that I could unpack and deliver to a gallery in Utsunomiya today. While I was firing the kids "hung around" and enjoyed the fine weather.

Yesterday was a day of rest and Mika celebrated her birthday.

The children and I baked and decorated her cake.

Tomorrow I fly out to the UK, to build and fire one of my kilns at David and Margaret Friths pottery in Denbigh, North Wales for Steve Tootell. I will also be giving a lecture and demonstration for the North Wales Potters Association on the sixth. Hopefully I will be able to research some traditional beer at the local pub while I'm there!

Art and Artifice

That which is beautiful does not cease to be so merely because we are inured to it. Modern society tends to cauterize ours basic senses and makes us blind, deaf and insensitive to the simple and essential beauty that is inherent in nature, surrounding us every day. It takes a great deal of effort to peel away the veneered layer upon layer of false values and preconceptions that have been pasted over our perceptions and become aware of the simple truths that are self evident around us. It is easy to judge your life, your success, by monetary standards, but those standards are artificial and manmade, not intrinsic or even necessarily real. Nor is it healthy to constantly judge yourself based on opinions of others, for everyone of us has the freedom of thought to define themselves.

I find great joy in simple things. "They" say that "small things amuse small minds", but I disagree. The ability to perceive the magnificence of nature in something as simple as a sea shell, or to find joy and satisfaction in making a coffee mug, or two hundred coffee mugs, is acknowledging ones place in this droplet of life in the vast desolate cosmos. Every day is a miracle, every moment a revelation.

God is in the details, I have heard said, and I think that is true. Nature does not forget the underside of a shell or leaf, each is a masterpeice, no two the same, and yet they are all in harmony with each other. Modern society has set too much value on uniformity, on sameness, and lost the beauty of pattern and rhythm that is a part of nature and traditional craft and society.

The things which we make with our hands, for our hands to use, should be as beautiful and immediate to us as the beauty of nature. They should not be mechanical sterile barriers between us and nature. That is the difference between art and artifice, a difference that is vital to the future of human society.

A Small Journey

Since feudal times Japan has had a "self government system" which has it's foundation in local community groups known as "Han". Government filters down from parliament through prefectures to cities and towns, then to the districts within them and finally the local han. Everyone knows each other, and there is an obligation to help each other in a crisis. In times of sickness, emergency or tragedy, the leader of the han ( the "Hancho") will notify all the householders and they will gather together to deal with the problem. There are also many regular local events, festivals, cleaning and repair of shrines and temples and other such gatherings that ensure a community identity. One such event is the annual weekend excursion.

This year I am the Hancho of our community, and we journeyed off to niigata for the weekend.

Our journey began with a visit to the emerald lake on mount Bandai, an active volcano. The blue colour of the water is due to minerals from the volcanic activity.

]We then stopped for lunch at the "Bukeyashiki" samurai barracks in Aizu wakamatsu. I was particularly moved be the simple beauty of the tea house.

In the afternoon there was time to visit a garden of iris blossoms, where the whole valley was planted with 60,000 iris bulbs. The essence of japanese beauty is not, however, in a vista of flowers, but rather in a single bloom.

The carp in the ornamental garden of the onsen (hotspring) hotel where we stayed, rose eagerly in the pool at the foot of the waterfall in search of hand feeding.

We visited the shrine of mount Yahiko on the second day. The architecture blended calmly into the forest.

Unlike many shrines this building was unadorned, emphasising the qualities of the timber from which it had been made and the skills of the craftsman that built it.

Our final destination was the fish markets on the waterfront at Teradomari on the Sea of Japan. It was my first visit to the west coast, and my first visit to the beach for four years. The last beach I went to was bondi.

There is nothing like the feel of the sand beneath your feet as the waves lap over them.

Of course no journey is complete without tasting the local beer, so here's cheers!

Money Spiders?

Last year we found a silver spider under the eaves and left it alone to eat whatever mosquitos or other annoying insects it could. In the back of my mind I also hoped that it might bring us a bit of good luck in the "Silver" department. Admittedly things have been going pretty well for us over the last year but whether that's due to luck or hard work....

Today we discovered a half a dozen of them around the outside of the house. They are only small, their body is about the size of a grain of rice, but they shine like a nugget of pure silver.

They say that spiders in the garden are a sign of a healthy environment and, unlike Australia, Japan doesn't have a problem with poisonous spiders. So we shall leave them to share our home and, who knows, they might be lucky afterall.

Bones

Australia is old, you can feel its bones beneath your feet, see the skin and sinew of the soil stretched across the shoulder of the horizon. Long dead volcanoes had lain a layer of basalt across the broad plateau, and millenia of erosion had worn a web of deep valleys through it.

Once upon a time a young man sat on a boulder atop a mesa and gazed westward over the flat top hills towards the setting sun. Below him on the left, at the bottom of a steep ravine, flowed the river Colliban, and to the right Spring Gully creek. Storm clouds were blowing towards him, black and ominous. Between him and the sunset the rain began to fall in billowing curtains, and shafts of gold and rainbow light radiated across the land.

Down in the valley a pair of kookaburras laughed at some private joke, while magpies warbled a song of longing to each other in red gums on the ridge. A flock of pink and grey galahs screeched southward toward the shelter of the bush, the sunset edging their feathers in gold.

Suddenly lightning flashed, a bolt of fire that reached from the clouds to the earth, the burning passion of the heavens reaching out for his beloved. The young man could smell the rain like perfume on the breeze that caressed his cheek and ran its fingers through his hair. Unbidden a tear rolled down his cheek to lay a gentle, salty kiss upon his lips. His senses tingled and his heart swelled. Here, alone with the world, he was less lonely than he had ever felt, filled with a sense of belonging. He was a witness to, no, a part of these forces of nature, nature aware of itself, experiencing itself and saying "I AM". No judgemental eyes to look down on him, no nagging voices telling him who he should or should not be. He was home.

The sun has risen and set every day since the earth began. There had never been a sunset exactly like this before, there never would be again. Each day is a precious and unrepeatable jewel in the passage of time, each hour, each moment a treasure that enriches our lives.

My life has been a journey of discovery, my work has been an attempt to give form to the passion that the beauty of this world has filled me with.

The hills and mountains of Japan are young, still buxom and vital in their youth. Their slopes are covered in lush forests, and rice paddys stretch wet and shining around their feet. I watched the sun set behind the mountains of Nikko today from my front yard, as a thunderstorm rolled across the rice fields. A lone heron winged silently across the valley, as the sun slowly faded behind a cloud band, an orange smudge on the grey canvas of the summer sky. In my hand I have a goblet of australian merlot, and my family wait for me in my home, for they are my home.

I remember the young man who came down from the mesa so long ago, not as if it were yesterday, but as if it were today. Every sound and touch, fragrance and flavour, every mote of light still lingers inside me. As I walk back to the house I carry him inside myself, along with all the other memories of the man or boy I was on other days. And I will carry today along also into the undiscovered future that awaits me and it gives me hope, for there will always be beauty waiting for me to find it, and passion left to share. I can feel it in my very bones.