Sunday, January 08, 2006

Pit Firing




Sally Hartman and I did our first pit firing last summer in a great spot by the river that runs through my farm. We used hay, straw. shredded paper, veneer scraps, wood and lots of dead twigs and grass. We had a great time and fell in love with pitfiring. The results were wonderful. Now we have gotten funding by New York State Council on the Arts to do a pitfiring workshop this summer. Our funding conduit is the Canton Public Library. So my plan is to use this blog to record in words and pictures all the sawdust firings and pit firings I do between now and this summer and to show our results from the summer workshop. This should be a sharing of knowledge and hopefully will inspire others to try out this wonderful way of firing clay.
Sally makes weed racks and bowls and I make beads, buttons and pendants. Now Sally is getting interested in jewelry too, as pit fired beads and earrings look so fantastic when set with silver findings and spacer beads.
This first pitfiring lasted 2 full days before it was cool enough for us to dig out our treasures from the ashes. Here is a picture of the pit filled and in full fire:

1 comment:

  1. very nice pictures, I wonder...are those beads glazed also? maybe barnished, do you paint them with laca?
    I subscribed to your blog to keep watching all your
    nice work!

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.

Raku Bead Video Part III