4 minute read
Drawn to the Flame
The Anagama Story
Wood firing is an ancient practice that demands extraordinary attention to feeding the flame over five days. The anagama kiln is a hand-built brick oven descended from an ancient Japanese wood-firing kiln. The flame, smoke and ash combine to create unique one-of-a-kind patterns on each vessel. Anagama kilns, which can be built in various sizes and shapes, have a devoted following around the world.
BY MARCIA BIGGS
Things will be heating up the first three weeks of January when potters and ceramic artists from across the country converge in St. Pete’s Warehouse Arts District for an annual ritual that centers around a massive wood-burning kiln. Florida Heat, A Wood Fire Workshop, brings top-notch instructors and up to 45 participants together January 3-18 for learning and camaraderie at the Morean Workshop Space and Morean Center for Clay.
One could almost call it St. Pete’s own toned-down version of Burning Man festival. But in this case, the object of adoration is a 30-foot-long brick kiln known as an anagama kiln which must be lovingly loaded and fed with wood, then tended over a week to 10 days to reach the proper firing temperature of 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit.
The annual event, with a registration fee of $895, requires participants to ship their unfired pieces to the Morean prior to the start date. Some 700 to 1,000 individual works will carefully be loaded into the 500-cubic-foot kiln over two to three days, then the door is finally bricked up for another five days of firing around the clock.
During this time, workshop participants share in the feeding of the wood until the furnace’s huge belly will finally burst into flame. Demonstrations and teaching sessions are held, and about a week to 10 days later when the kiln has cooled down, the door bricks are removed and pieces unloaded.
Matt Long, a professor of ceramics at the University of Mississippi, has had a love affair with wood firing since he was a teen. He has been part of the leadership team for the annual anagama firing for nearly two decades.
“It’s impressive, a remarkable thing to watch,” he said during a phone interview from his home studio in Oxford, Miss. “You need a crew that can work 24-7 to maintain progress of the temperature, which is tricky. Day 2 is interesting when people have their work ready to be loaded — up to 1,000 pieces — it’s a massive undertaking that’s amazing to watch. By Day 4, if you are there at night you can see the flames shooting out when they open the door to load it, it’s incredibly beautiful.”
The Morean anagama kiln was built in 2003, when ceramic artists Beth Morean and Valerie Knaust enlisted Don Reitz and Brian Harper to build it at the then St. Pete Clay Company. At that time there were only a handful of them across the United States, said Knaust, who now manages the Morean Workshop Space.
“Anagama kilns were once extremely rare in the United States but have grown in popularity, particularly as backyard size kilns,” says Long. “The larger ones like we have in St. Pete are rarer.”
The rewards for those who return year after year to the wood fire workshop are many, adds Long, rekindling old friendships, learning new techniques and finally seeing the untouched beauty of their work once it’s removed from the kiln.
“Every time we open that kiln, everything is a surprise,” he said.
