Stories from the Shard Pile By Keith Rice-Jones

Having been asked to give a talk
on Canadian wood firing at Sturt
WoodFire 2008 in Australia, 1 asked
people to give me some idea about
why they wood fired. I have some
understanding of what attracts
me to wood firing but asking the
“why” question has led me to a
wider consideration of why the
hell I struggle with this sometimes
unforgiving material and the often
frustrating process of firing. As it
turned out, at a post-symposium
discussion, kiln disasters were not
an uncommon experience for the
gathered “experts”...

earlier test on our clay so decided
to go with that, rushing everything
through to meet their opening
deadline. We had planned to get
the whole order through two firings
along with regular stock. At the time
we were using full-sized Crane silicon
carbide shelves for the back two stacks
and, in the first firing, one broke and

dropped, breaking the one beneath.
Fortunately it was early enough
in the firing that we could abort
and clean up the mess. Actually, we
had lost very little. So now with
even tighter timelines, we decided to
restack and do the whole

Celia and I are fond of
saying that we have over 80

Wildrice restaurant order
in one firing.

years ofexperience between —--. WE ask The cones went down
us and we still invent new nicely and hopes were high
ways to screw-up! Youmay gQyrselyves, when we opened the kiln
remember an earlier article three days later. What we
of mine, “Honey I Blew- “Wh found was that the glaze
Up the Kiln”. We went to y do we test which had looked fine
England some years ago, . on the flat surface of the
do this?”

not long after a particularly
disastrous firing when a

shelf had broken. On the

test (we'd used a shard) had
not coped with any sort of
vertical surface and much

trip, we visited one of the
international gurus, Mick Casson.
You would think someone like him
would have it all figured out, after
all he wrote a book! Well, Mick
was trying to work out what had
happened after losing a whole load
in his salt kiln. And then there was
Wayne Ngan who used lovely white
beach sand in his kiln only to have it
all fuse from the fluxing salt.

Another quite spectacular kiln
disaster of ours involved a big order
for Wildrice Restaurant. We'd taken
it on at the request of another potter
for whom the order was just too big
and, well, Wildrice Studio making
pots for Wildrice Restaurant was just
too much to resist.

‘The restaurant had seen the other
potter’s work which involved a glaze
combination on a different clay from
ours. We had a similar look from an

of the load was stuck to the
shelves. With some very careful work
and literally hours of grinding we
managed to salvage enough pots for
the restaurant’s opening and most of
the shelves. A lesson learned, to test
thoroughly and not to take on other’s
timelines.

Clay has a way of bringing you
down to size when you have gotten
away with something once and think
you can take things for granted. Of
course it would soon get boring if it
was too predictable so we all find ways
to push the edges a bit. Working with
the hard-edge precision of my large
complex sculptures and firing them
to a point where the clay gets soft is,
I guess, my way of living dangerously.
What can I say, it’s a compulsion.
And after a firing when there are
more contributions to the shard pile
than usual, we ask ourselves, “Why

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter - May 2008

Keith and Celia Rice-Jones work
together as Wildrice Studio. Far right:
The Juggler made in Australia during
Keith’s Sturt Residency, 2006; 30” high;
now in the collection of Jane and Martin
Lemann in Bowral, NSW, Australia.

do we do this?” At the time we are
usually too busy with a hammer or
grinding kiln shelves to come up with
an immediate answer, but when it’s
all cleared up we head right back into
the studio and open up another bag
of clay...

Pottery
Workshop
on
Salt Spring
Island
July 17-26th, 2008

Pat Webber is offering her
annual workshop where
potters hand build, throw,
glaze and fire pots in high
fire and raku.

Pat has over thirty years of
teaching experience and potting.
To receive a brochure by mail call

Pat at 1.250.537.8871, or email

jwebber@saltspring.com

For a full descriptive
course outline see:

www.PatWebber.ca