When you make a piece of pottery it has a long way to go before becoming your favorite mug to sip coffee out of or holding your next bouquet of flowers. Our kiln is used twice in this process, the first time to turn your clay to bisque ware (which is basically turning it to stone) and the second time to melt the glaze and seal your pottery making it waterproof and beautiful at the same time!
Pottery is created while the clay is fresh and becoming leather hard depending on what you are making. When you have finished your piece we let it sit for a week or so to allow all of the moisture to leave the clay and it becomes bone dry ready for firing. I often will take the opportunity to clean my pot when it's bone dry just to make sure everything is smooth and ready to be permanent. This is why we have a drop-in session for our clay projects to allow you to do this if you want the full experience. Bone dry clay is very fragile and you have to be extra careful when handling it so as to not break it with too much pressure or dropping it as you will lose the piece.
Once the clay is bone dry and room temperature we go ahead and load it in the kiln for a bisque firing of Cone 04 or Cone 05 depending on the clay. The kiln heats up to about 1900 degrees Fahrenheit and then holds it for a short while. It then shuts off the heat to the coils and the heat slowly dissipates as the kiln comes back down to room temperature. That's when we are safe to open the kiln and see how our pottery fared.
The final results are stone pieces that are still porous and ready for paint or glaze. We have lots of pieces ready for glaze right now at the studio! I must say that opening the kiln with finished bisque ware is exciting if everything survived, but opening a glaze firing is always way better because I love to see how everything came out with it's beautiful new colors!
