2. Wood Fired Pottery - at Guldagergaard

Welcome! Today we're doing wood firing. In fact we started yesterday. With me I have Ronja. Hi Ronja! And we started yesterday. We were chopping wood. Lots of wood because we're firing two kilns. This one it's not so big and a bigger one over there. I'm going to show you in a minute. And actually we started two months ago or something. You started a year ago. Yeah. Doing all the pots for the wood firing. We're using stoneware and porcelain. You've been doing most in porcelain. Didn't do much. Anyway we did lots of pots. We actually did way many more pots than we can fit in the stove. But we didn't want to waste any space so we just brought more than we could fit. So yesterday we glazed everything and we placed it in the kiln and using these little what is it called? Boddings? Boddings. Boddings. Material that you put in the bottom of the pots to make sure they don't burn onto the So now we close the kilns and Helene who's with us, our master, knows everything about the kilns woke up at four o'clock this morning and started the big kiln and then I woke up at six, started the little one and then Ronja woke up at nine and took over on the big one. And so we will have to fire this for the next 12, 15, 20 hours. We don't know for sure because we gotta reach a certain temperature at about 1300 degrees and then keep it there for a couple of hours. And right now you can see we are, I don't know if you can see that, but we are on 435 degrees centigrade on this one. I think we're a little further up on the other one, maybe 600, 700. But there's still a few hours to go, a little more than a few hours, before we reach top temperature. When we reach about 800 degrees we will go into reduction a couple times. Reduction is a technique where you actually limit the oxygen to the fire and then the fire will seek oxygen from within the clay mass. So it actually extracts oxygen from the clay, which does something wonderful to the colors of the glaze. It's a very complex technique. It just produces very good colors. And together with the fire that are surrounding the ceramics and the ashes that blow around the kiln, the results of wood firing is just amazing. You probably know it from a lot of Japanese ceramics. And tonight we're gonna end the fire and then it has to cool down. So we will go home with a place called Funerarborg now. And we will go home and we will come back in two, three days, Wednesday. It's Saturday night now. And we will open the kilns and of course we will show you the magical mysteries of what we've done. Maybe some of it is good, maybe some of it is trash. We don't know for sure. It's a very unpredictable way of firing, but we're looking forward to the results. So this is our master, the wood fire expert, Helene Fridayen. So how many wood fires have you done? I have done it for 12 years. I would say instead of half a million. A lot of them. So Helene is teaching me and Ronja how to do this. It is me and Ronja's first time. We are virgins. No, you're not virgin. That's the second time. You're virgin with your own stuff. My job during the next 15-20 hours is to monitor the temperature, rising temperature. When it drops a little bit, I will add more wood to the kiln. You need to wear these gloves because it's very, very warm now. 400 degrees. And so when it drops a little bit, I will add more wood to it. And now it will hopefully rise. And then when it rises, it will then drop a little bit. I will add more wood and then it will rise again. So it's a constant move up and down, hopefully going up to about 300 degrees. So I'm gonna move away now because it's getting really, really warm. So now we reach about 800 degrees and we moved into reduction. So Ronja just cut off all the oxygen. So the kiln is suffering and smoking and choking and making funny sounds. And it looks very unhealthy, but it should produce some really, really exciting results. Flames are coming out of the sides. And if we look outside, there's still some smoke coming out of the chimney. So I don't know. So we will let it choke with the body reduction, oxygen reduction for how long? Five minutes. Okay. And then we're going to let in some oxygen again and then we will go back into reduction. I think a few more times. Yeah. And then we will take a few more rounds like that and hopefully it will create some amazing colors on the glazes. So that's going to be very exciting. The other kiln, the small one, is still not there yet. I think, what have we here? We have reached 450 degrees. So there's still a little more to go. Now five minutes have passed. So now we will open up and let some oxygen back into the kiln. No more smoke and no more fire trying to escape. So now we're going back to oxidation and raising the temperature again. And then you can see here maybe the temperature is more higher. Then you can look in. I'm not sure how much we can see in there. But it's red orange. It's a good color. Temperature up a little bit more and then I get another reduction. So this is the second body reduction on the big kiln. It looks very dramatic. It kind of is. It's 800-900 degrees and we cut off the oxygen supply. So now the fire is taking out oxygen from the clay body. It's kind of escaping the oven. And if we look outside, there's probably a lot of smoke coming out of the chimney. Yep, it's a good sign too. And we will let this one run for a few minutes and then we will go back to oxidation. Or actually Rania will. I will do nothing except for filming it. So now we introduced the first body reduction on the small kiln and it's now going a bit crazy. And the temperature, well we can't see that, but it's about 830 degrees. And we're actually also doing body reduction on the big kiln. It's the fifth body reduction and lots of nice smoke coming up and the main fireplace. So now we have reached cone 5, which is about 1196 degrees. And we can see, I don't know if you can see it here, but if we zoom in maybe you can see, the first cone has bent. It's a little bit difficult to see. It is now almost 10 o'clock and we've been firing for how long? 14 hours, I think, in the small one and a little more in the big one. And we're still fighting the small one to get it hot enough. And we're preparing for... It appears that the roof has been burned down. And now we are preparing for infusion of soda. So this will be sprayed into the kiln and create this beautiful layer of salts on the pots. So right now they're mixing it up and in a few seconds we will spray that into the kiln. Very exciting. So now our good friend Jan is taking the last steps before the soda infusion and finding the right hole to infuse it and getting the security in place. And yeah, and in a few minutes magic should happen. So now they are infusing. So now comes the most exciting moment. We're just about to open the first kiln and see what is inside. We hope some of it is good. Probably is. It looks like this kiln was fired perfectly. There was some problems with the other one. So let's be more tweaky with that. But come back to that in a second. So my first wood fired bowl. I think it turned out pretty good. Lots of ashes inside. Nice shown. This one I am very happy about. That turned out really really well. This is a cobalt texture here and the glaze turned out perfect. No cracks in the bottom. And one of my crazy parts. It was actually intended to be more more red. But it's more red inside as you can see here. And again no cracks in the bottom. This one turned out very nice as well. Nice texture. No cracks. A couple of small vases. Again no cracks. Nice texture. Actually this was also a red glaze but it's very unpredictable as I said. So it turned out bright but still interesting. So probably my most crazy part were these Icelandic textures. I like the way it turned out. I'll show you some better pictures later. This is another one of my crazy parts. It was supposed to be red all over but it turns out that it needs a very thick layer to be red. So I got a red border down here. But I still like I like the color. It's like a green teal kind of color. Some red inside too. This one I really like. That turned out really really nice. Very nice. I think it's a Sheldon glaze. As you can see the way that the fire, the flames and the ashes around this Sheldon is really good. And again no cracks. Very nice. This one looks so ancient in a way. I really really like this one. The way that the color is turning around and again no cracks. This is really good. Here's a small bowl. I got one too. Very nice color. A couple of my thin neck glazes. Beautiful blue colors. No problems in the bottom. Actually I only had one little problem which is this one. But it can be saved. It's really really beautiful. But the glaze ran a little more than I expected. So this wadding as we talked about before have stuck to the glaze. So I need to grind that a little bit with my diamond grinder. But it should be okay once it's all done. It's still beautiful. This is another one of my kind of Iceland inspired crazy textured vases. Or not vases. A bowl. And it turned out very very nice. A little bit lighter than I expected but I still like it. Another one of my Icelandic inspired textured bowls. And turned out really really nice. Oh the bottom burned. Nice. It's got a funny little thing. I don't know if you can see it. But yeah you can see it here. It kind of bubbled up. It looks funny. I don't know what that is. But it looks interesting. This is a good example of something that went wrong. But actually turned out really really well. Because Ronja made a cup in earthware. And earthware is not intended to be fired at the temperature that we fired this kiln. So it actually melted out completely flat. And it dripped down on the shelf below. And it hit this bowl. So as you can see it hit it inside. But it actually made this really really beautiful color. And it dripped down the side a little bit. And luckily enough it didn't hit the bottom. So this is a mistake that turned out even more beautiful. So now Ronja is when I sell this one she wants a commission. Which is fair enough I think. And here's another one of my Icelandic inspired crazy textured bowls. Which actually turned out much better than I thought. I like this turned out a little more dark. Which is perfect for this. So I'm happy. This one is interesting too. Not only because it actually turned out really nice on the outside. But on the inside it's like filled up with ashes. It was literally standing in the middle of the fire. And I'll clean it up and see what it actually looks like. But so far it looks interesting. Another couple of bowls. This one is already sold I want to say. I haven't got the money yet. But this one is really beautiful too. Now we are taking apart the second kiln. Which is a little bit smaller than the other one. And we had some firing problems with this. It was difficult to get it to the right temperature. And now that we unpacked it or opened up the holes we can see that it actually didn't reach the temperature it was supposed to. So now we are very curious to see if it is a total mistake. Or if it's interesting still. We don't know. This is also the kiln where we infused soda. So it should have this beautiful layer of soda. We hope. No it will not. Because it has to be 1280 degrees. And the kiln has not been that. Okay. So it probably just dripped down to the bottom or something. Now considering the fact that it was actually fired completely wrong. It didn't reach the temperature it should. It actually looks really really good. We have only revealed the first two top layers. Which was probably warmer than the lower ones. But it looked really really good. So this is everything that came out of the big kiln. This is from the top and going down to the middle. And down here we have what was furthest away from the fire. And that turned out really nice too. So now we will start taking things out of the small problem and putting it on this table. So it looks good so far. Even though the fire was not at a high enough temperature. The result looks very good. So let's start taking it out now. My first one out of this small kiln. I like that. It turned out well. The bottom is good. No cracks. The texture is emphasized with the brown stuff. It's good. Now this turned out very different than I expected. Again I used this red glaze. And it actually turned kind of red here. Rosa. And I used some cobalt on the side. And that actually turned out really nice too. Very interesting colors. See here. This one I'm very happy. A ribbed base. It's wheel thrower. And then I made these ribs. And the whole color scale from blue, white, pink, reddish here. It's very good. And the borderline button. Perfect. No cracks. I like that. This is my first wood fire teapot. And the colors are amazing. I hope there's a hole. So the water should be able to get out. And we need to get it a few hits to get the lid off. This is my second teapot. It actually looks very good too. But I'm afraid there's a problem with the glaze that has blocked the holes. So we'll see if we can drill them out somehow. I think maybe. Because it looks really good. Here's one that actually turned out almost the way that I expected it to. Red on the inside. And this beautiful glaze on the outside. And again good button. No cracks. And yep. The waddings go right on. So that's almost perfect. This one is really nice too. It actually only got ashino glaze, which you can see on the inside. But I guess it stood close to something red. Because it got this red on one side. But it looks really, really nice. Here's another few of my cups. Japanese style teacups. This one with black stains and ashino. And this one with ashino. And again it stood close to something red. So it got a little bit of shady of the red. I can't remember. Now one of my cups with a strong texture on the outside. And black stains and ashino glaze. Turned out really nice. Nice teacup. So this is everything that came out of the small kiln. Except for a couple ones that is attached to the shelves. Which we will try and get off. Everything actually turned out really good. A lot of small things there. Cups and my teapots. And crazy experiment from Helene here. More cups, vases. I think we should be happy about that. Yeah! Succeeded! So that's it. We cleaned up the kiln. We gave it a new fresh shelf wash. A special compound that you put on the shelf. So it doesn't stick too much. Always do that when you finish the kiln. And it's empty now. We have packed everything. We have cleaned also the big kiln. And as you can hear in the background Helene is just grinding the last shelf. So everything is good and ready for the next team to fire. We had a very good firing. And I hope you enjoyed the video. And I hope to see you soon again.