We Finally Got to Fire Our Local Melgund Township Clay!

We’ve been wanting to do this since we first started digging into the clay around Borups Corners in Melgund Township this summer. We collected it, worked it by hand, made some rough little test pieces and set them aside for pit firing. Then came the fire restrictions, and our plans had to wait. We watched the summer go by, kept working on other things, and waited for our chance.

Now there’s a huge fire burning, a pile of wood waiting to go on, and our little clay experiments are right in the middle of it all. After months of talking about it, we are finally pit firing our own local clay!

We have been experimenting with simple forms, including some little clay tubes that we made specifically to see how they would hold up. Nothing fancy. These are test pieces, and that is the point. We want to get to know this material, see what it can do and find out whether the clay beneath our feet might have a place in our ongoing ceramics practice.

So, what exactly is pit firing?

Pit firing is one of the oldest ways of firing pottery. Instead of putting pieces into an electric or gas kiln, you use a wood fire to heat them. The clay is exposed to the heat, smoke, ash and changing atmosphere of the fire, all of which can affect the finished surface.

There is no digital temperature display telling us exactly what is happening inside our fire. The flames rise and fall, the wood burns down into glowing coals, and the conditions change as the firing progresses. It’s a very different experience from working with a modern kiln, and the results can be wonderfully unpredictable.

Depending on the clay and the firing conditions, pieces can develop reds, oranges, greys and deep blacks, along with smoky markings and other surface variations. Some pieces might crack or break. Others might come out looking completely different from what we imagined. We won’t know until we get them out and have a proper look.

And that’s what makes this so interesting and so much fun. We aren’t working with a bag of commercially prepared clay with a known firing range. We’re working with material harvested right here in Melgund Township, and we’re figuring things out as we go.

How will it respond to the heat? Will the little tubes hold together? What colours will emerge? Every firing gives us something new to work with, even when the results aren’t what we expected.

Tomorrow morning can’t come soon enough

We’ve had a big fire going for hours now, and the pit is packed with hot coals and ash. The plan is to leave everything to cool and, hopefully, dig out the pieces tomorrow morning. We are very, very curious to see what’s waiting for us under all that ash.

This is a small experiment, but it’s an exciting one for our work with local materials. For tonight, we’re letting the coals do their thing. Tomorrow, if everything has cooled enough, we’ll see what became of our first batch of pit fired local Borups Corners clay.

We can’t wait.