'09 Summer Pit Fire

We had our "Summer of '09 Pit Fire" at our traditional spot on the Oregon coast. Ah, nothing like laying on the beach with your beautiful wife, next to a warm fire, with the soothing sounds of the crashing waves in the distance, breathing the fresh ocean air, wail the pottery that you have put so much hard work into is in it's final stages, and is, at this point, out of your control and in the hands of the fire.


Just like last time we numbered each piece and kept good data on what we wrapped the piece in prior to the firing. Taking pictures is very helpful in this process. The more meticulous you are the better you will learn what works and does not work in the pit fire process. This is the science part of it.

Some of our work we did not wrap in anything but rather just threw it straight into the fire. Others we wrapped with various combinations of: Copper carbonate, Iron oxide, banana peals, steer manure, and seaweed. Sometimes we would wrap our work in news paper. This was meant to burn away. Sometimes we would wrap our pieces in tin foil. That was meant to isolated the piece from the rest of the fire's combustibles so that only the combustibles inside the tin foil would effect the piece.

This year's pit was different

This year we tried some different things then we did last time:

We wanted to avoid the cold spots that previously appeared around the edge of the fire. To achieve this we lined the entire outer wall with logs. We also found that this helped hold up the walls in the loose sand. Another thing that we hoped to achieve in this years pit fire was more reduction, which we did achieve. We made the assumption that where there was more reduction, there would be more vibrant colors (reduction is where there is lack of oxygen in the atmosphere. Many chemical reactions in pottery happen differently depending on the amount of oxygen that is in the atmosphere).

So, to achieve more reduction we wanted less airflow between logs and more smoldering. For less air flow we made a smaller round pit instead of a large rectangle pit. We also packed the pieces tighter together than we did last time. For a smoldering effect we used wood pellets (like the ones for pellet burning wood stoves) This also helped to create a a nice bed of coals.

Then we threw some more pellets on top of our work to create more smoldering and thus more reduction.

This resulted in our work being mostly covered with this deep charcoal black in varying proportions. Where the vibrant colors showed up was in the few spaces where the pottery got a little more air than the rest (but still got heavy reduction). Once the pieces are polished up (with furniture wax or shoe polish, one can come to really like the rustic looking shiny charcoal black. So, we have learned how to archive that.

However I still seek those vibrant varying colors of red, yellow, green, orange, black and white that I know pit fire possess. To achieve this I believe I will have to attempt to add a little more oxygen than I did this time. I don't want to add too much oxygen and have my pieces come out completely white. What I hope to achieve is the perfect contrast between oxidation and reduction. This I hope will give me the variation of colors that I am looking for. What I really enjoy is the trial and error in the pursuit of the perfect contrast.

Then.... the next weekend:

The next free weekend that My wife and I had we decided to take a fishing/camping trip up the Trask river. We took the pit fire pieces that we were the least satisfied with from the previous pit fire and decided to just toss them in our camp fire.

The camp fire was your standard camp fire and we did not wrap our pieces in anything nor did we do anything special to the camp fire. It was just a regular old camp fire like you would have on your average camping trip. We used a small bundle of some wood that we brought with us but most of the wood used was a mix of the the different bramble that we found around our camp site

I suppose that the mix of different bramble from the varying native plants may have added to the variation in color that showed up on our pieces. Amazing! Our camp fire, without doing anything special, proved to be an excellent pit fire with good contrast between reduction and oxidation. And we got some really great colors!

The best part was that it was so simple. It was the same basic camp fire that we would be having anyway, so why not turn it into a pit fire? Another thing that is nice is that with pit fired pottery; if your not happy with your piece the first time you fire it, you can fire it over and over again until your happy with it. Each time the old colors from the previous firing will burn off and new colors will burn on.

For more detailed pictures of my recent pit fire pieces click here.