Pit Firing!

Hey guys! Today I was fortunate enough to see pit firing being performed at the park where I am doing my residency. Pit firing is one of the most widespread and oldest form of ceramic firings going back 30,000 years. It was used in ancient times by the Egyptians the Greeks and the Romans as well as by Native Americans, early Europeans, and is still used today by some Native American tribes, many African pottery collectives, and many modern ceramic artists. The pit firing I saw today was in celebration of the beginning of the fire festival in the town of Shigaraki where I'm living. Here are some pictures and videos of the event!

The firing should take about 18 hours. Six hours to fire and 12 hours to cool down. Artists place the pots into a shallow pit in the ground. They then place bricks around the pits to create some depth. The pots are surrounded with kindling, usually sawdust, that will burn and heat up the clay. The pots are then covered with wood and the piles are lit on fire. The artists will continue to feed wood in to the piles until they reach the temperature that is needed for the pots to become hard or vitrified. This can be very dangerous so the people stoking the fire must be careful.  The fire will create a lot of really interesting effects on the surface of the pots from the ash and the burning of the wood.  The fire can even create patterns on the clay. 

Once the pits reach the temperature needed the artists will stop adding wood to the fire and they will cover the pits to start the cooling process. The pits are covered so that the pots will not cool down too fast and crack.

  

Once the pots are at a safe and cool temperature they are removed from the pit and washed off to reveal their new surfaces.  The white clay turned pink, black, and even green, depending on where it was in the pit firing.