Dancing With the Dragon

The Anagama kiln at Peter's Valley School of Craft-left, in the day, the same at night.

Even without the added eyeballs and horns, the anagama kiln at Peter’s Valley would look like a dragon. It only gets fired once per year, it takes a lot of wood and a lot of people power to fire this 57 foot long kiln-and that’s exactly what I was up to for this past week. As I write this, the kiln is cooling down, I will post again after the unload which is coming up this Sunday. ​

A view of the interior of the kiln during loading; the very back section is already loaded here, but this gives you an idea of the interior, which is embedded into the hillside.

I worked nights, and hung out during the day as much as I could when I wasn’t sleeping. The workshop was led by the Tara Wilson, an amazing artist with a trove of woodfire experience. Charlie Lid was on overnights (among a lot of other things), a veritable brain trust who has fired this kiln 22 times and made repairs to it. The staff at Peter’s Valley is awesome, all in all it was a great group of people. From loading to finishing was all interesting, but my favorite part was the overnight crew firing the kiln. Each night got hotter, and the last night was just nothing short of magical. We were giving the kiln exactly what it wanted (with Charlie’s interpretations) and it responded. In a few hours, we side-stoked over 900 pieces of wood, and that not counting what was put in the main firebox at the mouth of the kiln. There was music on, and all of us at some point were literally dancing; there was so much joy, we were dancing with the kiln. It’s an experience I will never forget. ​

View of the back of the kiln. The damper is resting on bricks only inches from the ground, but even at the sides where the damper is right on the sides of the kiln, the flames hungry for oxygen are finding their way out.

It’s hard to come up with words that describe the sheer power and elemental force of the flames within the kiln, that on that last night refused to be contained by the lids on the stoke holes, or the damper at the end of the kiln. Note that in the above photo and video, there is nothing “open” on the kiln; there are lids on the stoke holes and a big solid damper covering most of the end of the kiln-but the fire was so powerful that after we would stoke, it would erupt like a volcano from the slightest of gaps. ​