In these times, when we are so concerned about pollution and air quality. I’m amazed to find that it is still allowable to fire a fairly dirty, wood fired kiln right in the heart of Arita’s main street, old town centre.

This is a fairly old-fashioned sort of standard European, industrial, down-draught design of kiln, used early to mid last century. There is no attempt to install any scrubber or smoke minimization at all, not that I can see, and if they do have something in place it isn’t working, as is obvious from the smoke billowing from the chimney.

There are three men on shift over night, bringing it up to temperature throughout the day today. This is a stoneware reduction firing for the glaze. When this material is oxidised, it turns out a dark cream/dull beige colour. Not at all attractive. It’s because of the slight iron content. Even the hand-selected and hand-cleaned, super-white, ultra-expensive clay is just as dull. However, when this clay is reduced, it sings. It comes out a clear blue/white under a clear glaze and is a joy. This kiln is currently up to 1175oC and smack in the middle of its reduction cycle.

The air is super filthy inside the kiln shed. The ventilation is very poor, so the men have to wear paper dust masks, but they have chosen the very poorly fitting hygiene masks, that are ubiquitous here and designed to stop you breathing out or coughing on people in public and spreading mucus carried diseases. They are useless to prevent dust and smoke entering the lungs. If these guys work at this all their days, their lives will be shortened. I’m quite surprised that this is still allowed. The ventilation is so bad that it must be hell in here in summer.

I’m also surprised that they are still firing a kiln like this with wood, as all the glazed pots are stacked in saggars inside the kiln, so there will be no aesthetic of wood fly-ash contact. The saggars add extra weight to the thermal mass and makes the firing less fuel-efficient. Seeing that there is no aesthetic benefit  showing on the work. I wonder why they persist, especially as everyone tells me that they are doing it so tough here now and no one is making any money. They could reduce their firing costs significantly and clean the towns’ air quality by switching to a light-weight, low-thermal-mass, gas-fired, fibre or RI brick-kiln. If there really is some sort of aesthetic reason for persisting with the wood firing, then I can’t help but feel that the kiln should be moved out-of-town, changed to a downdraught firebox, or installed with a scrubber. I’m only an ignorant outsider here and have no right to be offering anyone any opinion, but these are the thoughts that go through my mind as I watch.

There are 2 fireboxes on each side of the kiln. Most likely firing up and over a bagwall, then down through the stacks of saggars to exit flues in the floor. These fireboxes are stoked alternately, first on the left, then the one on the right, symmetrical on each side, alternating every few minutes. There is a lot of smoky flame escaping through the vent holes and spy holes in the door, walls and dome. This is to inform the fireman as to the state of the atmosphere inside the kiln. He wants to know when the smoke is lessening and about to disappear. This indicates when it is time to re-stoke the fireboxes, so as to maintain the air-starved reduction atmosphere in the chamber. If I were here, doing this, I’d have all the windows open and a vent installed in the roof to clear the smoke from the work area. Actually, I’d probably get rid of the dirty up draught fireboxes with their expensive and short-lived metal fire bars and replace them with much cleaner downdraught fireboxes. For the comfort and health of the firemen, as well as improving air quality and fuel efficiency. I wonder if they realise that all that smoke billowing out of the kiln room and chimney top, represents expensive energy wasted?

I can only suppose so. Everything has a reason here. Just because I can’t figure it out, doesn’t mean that it isn’t important and valid. It’s just not what I’m used to. Even so, I can’t help think  that there will be some health ramifications for these employees, working in that filthy air.

I wonder what the towns folk think about it? Fortunately, as I’m here alone, I don’t have the language ability to get involved in this sort of in-depth conversation. Probably for the better. I don’t want to offend anyone.

Welcome to the new/old Arita!

I’ve just finished working on my stretchy stick, ‘nobebera’, and now the mossies are driving me inside. It’s time for dinner and I have most of the makings of an okonomiyaki pancake on hand, but I’m going to make an  Oka version.

Okonomiyaki is an interesting compound word, that has come to mean ‘pancake’ in common parlance, but if you break it down, okonomi can mean ‘your choice’, and yaki can mean ‘cooked’. So it has come to mean that you can make a pancake out of what ever you want to put in it.

I like that kind of recipe. I don’t have all the things that usually go into an okonomiyaki, but it’s my choice, so I will use what I have. Plenty of vegetables, held together with a bit of egg.

Okonomiyaki, can also mean ‘a stupid thing, of, my, pottery’. This could be a term used to describe my meagre efforts on the potters wheel here in Arita, so I have an affinity.

It’s quick, it’s fresh and it’s reasonably healthy. What more can you ask? I don’t have some of the normal essentials here in my tiny kitchen. I haven’t bought any mayonnaise and I don’t have any Japanese ‘tonkatsu’, BBQ style sauce, or any nagaimo, long yam root, but as the name implies, it’s my choice so I have what I want.

What I really like about this is that, apart from being really tasty, it is a one pan meal, so just right for my tiny kitchen, and so little washing up!

This could be enough for 2 helpings, but I manage to eat it all. I even have some bonito flakes to put on top. I love the way that they quiver around in excitement at the thought of being eaten! They know that they are delicious.

Itadakimas.

from Steve in Arita

The hand made stretchy stick!

Following on from my visit to the maker of Kanna turning tools and other wooden pottery tools. This afternoon, I have just found the time to make my commitment to my new hand-made stretchy stick. An implement used here for throwing the inside of open forms. This particular one is specifically made for throwing and opening up bowl forms, stretching them out, as it were. So why would I want one? 🙂

It was impressed upon me at the time of purchase that this tool is a partnership for life. A tool made of superior, old, well seasoned, azalea wood, that will last my whole lifetime if looked after, but it needs to be customised to my hand and my feel for the clay, then adjusted for my technique and the specific bowls that I am making. I will probably end up needing several of these tools in various subtlely different iterations. I may make some of my own once I have got used to this one, and if I find that it can be accommodated to my own preferences for throwing. I have plenty of fruit tree pruning wood at home, some in reasonably large enough cross-section to be useful for this application. I also have some very old, well seasoned, red grained, eucalyptus. That might be good to experiment with?

The weather has turned somewhat balmy after the snow. Maybe spring is on the horizon? Many trees are now in bud and the earliest peaches, plums and almonds are in flower.

I get up very early to start the firing in the wood fired kiln. It’s 4am. It’s bitterly cold and there is a crunchy frost that I can’t see in the pitch darkness of the very late night/early morn, but I can hear and feel it ‘crunch’ underfoot as I walk down to the pottery.

The firing goes well enough. Pretty well straight down the line as expected. It ought to, as this is the 23rd firing of this version of this iteration of this kiln. Before I could pack the kiln, I had to crawl inside the fire-box to chip out the build up of ash glaze slag. This is fairly normal, but this time I also had to chip out the stump of a snapped off hob brick, that broke off during the last firing and dropped into the firebox. A tricky job as the space is pretty limited, there isn’t much room to swing a hammer in there. In the past I have drilled several holes into the brick and then broken it into smaller pieces that I can chip out. It happens every few years.

This time I try something different. I decide to drill a hole from the outside of the kiln, into the spot where the back of the broken stub of firebrick ought to be. I line it up pretty closely and then using a metal rod, I hammer the old firebrick remnant out of it’s hole, where it has been sitting glazed in tight with all the wood ash for some time. It obliges me and slowly lets go and comes out of its socket fairly easily in only two pieces and a lot of small rubble and spalls.

Maintenance seems to take up and extraordinary amount of my time at this end of my life. This job has gone well, but others are waiting and ongoing. The kind of wood firing that I have developed is quite sedate and well paced with plenty of time to do small jobs, clean up and put away all the tools used in the packing. I sometimes do small maintenance jobs, but they have to be very simple. I can’t afford to get too involved in anything other than the process of firing. I certainly have time to sit and think, plan and ponder. It’s so luxurious to have time to just sit and think. I can afford this luxury, precisely because I have made sure that I have all the necessary wood fuel, and more, cut, split and stacked inside the kiln shed before I start the fire. I make a mental list of all the repair jobs that are waiting to be attended to. I need to replace the last piece of plastic crap that has recently snapped off the pottery roof.

This second piece of plastic crap storm water gutter head has also disintegrated and fallen from the pottery roof, just a couple of months after the first one.

(see; “Note to self: Don’t buy plastic crap” Posted on 04/05/2015 ) I swore that I wouldn’t buy another modern plastic one, and I won’t. So I take an hour off and make a new one out of stainless steel off-cuts from the kiln factory. As it’s my second one in two months, I can still remember how I made the first one and this one goes very quickly, as I avoid all the mistakes that I made inventing and making the first one. The upper face has to be raked back at an angle of 45 degrees, so that it can be fitted with some stainless steel mesh that acts as a leaf deflector.

The list of jobs is endless. Now, the guttering on the wood shed has rusted through with all the leaf litter that blows onto that roof from the tree cover. I make a new gutter and fit it up. I’m proud to say that I don’t buy prefabbed stop-ends and down-spouts. I was shown how to make them by one of my mentors. Joe Enfield, the local village plumber 40 years ago. I worked for him as his labourer/assistant for a couple of years when I first came here and didn’t have a proper house and certainly no pottery workshop or kiln. It took me a couple of years to get established again here after we were burnt out in a bush fire in Dural, where we had been renting a place.

I learnt a lot working for Joe. I was only employed on a casual basis on bigger jobs, or where there was crawling under-floor work or a lot of ladder work, as Joe was in his 60’s and close to retirement. He wasn’t obliged to teach me anything, That wasn’t the deal,  but we got on well together and he invested a lot of time in me because he could see that I was keen to learn. I don’t make very good sheet metal work, roof flashing or plumbing, but what I do works and doesn’t leak. I work in the old fashioned way that I was taught by Joe. One of the last of the ‘Old School’ plumbers who still knew do all the old hand skills.

I’m often in at the plumbers wholesale suppliers. They know that I’m not a plumber. I ask all the dumb questions about taps and toilets etc. I only have an account there because I buy a lot of gas fittings for my kiln work. So when I get a length of guttering, but decline the stop ends and down spouts, that are usually sold with it, they question me about it. All the plumbers buy the prefabbed parts, why don’t I. I’m proud to say that I can make my own from off cuts, scrap and leftover bits. Just the way that I was taught. Sometimes I end up making the parts out of stainless steel – because I can! I have more stainless steel off-cuts than galvanised metal to work with.

The firing proceeds slow and steady all the way up to top temperature. It turns out to be a glorious warm day with no wind. This firing, I go to 1320oC. Cone 11 down in the hot spot. 16 hours to top temp and then a 2 hour controlled burning down, until it is safe to leave it to cool naturally. I have my friend, Jim Black here throughout this firing. He helps me pack the kiln by rolling out all the little balls of wadding. During the firing, we sit and chat and solve all the worlds problems while we watch the kiln fire itself. Getting up every so often to stoke more logs into the firebox as necessary. We’re quite ready for bed when it’s all clammed up at 10pm.

The next couple of days, while the kiln is cooling, I have my other friend Warren here to help with the winter pruning. We get stuck in and prune all the almonds, blue berries and grape vines, trim the hedge and then weed and mow all the almonds, vegetable garden and citrus grove. it’s a long day, but well worth it when we look back after it’s finished. Everything in there is in good shape for spring now.

The next day we take down some ageing wattle trees that are over hanging the fuel shed. Its a slow process, because there are three big terracotta pots under these trees. One of them is from the Parliament House Project, from back in 1988. To drop these trees safely, I need to eliminate the weight of the upper branches, in the right places, bit by bit, by taking off one branch at a time, until each tree is whittled down to a trunk that can be chained to the truck and winched over in the right direction, so that it falls safely into a vacant space in the garden. The trunk and larger branches are then cut up into small kitchen-stove sized lengths and wheelbarrowed over to the wood shed to season for a year. The three trees take us all day to deal with and then clean up all the mess.

While I’m in a gardening mood, I optimistically decide to plant out a few carrot and beetroot seeds. Maybe it’s a little bit early yet, but it somehow seems to be a little warmer and the days are certainly getting longer. The garden trowel has completely rushed away at the end, by being left stuck in the soil while not in use. It’s rusted away down to half its length. I should have looked after it better. It’s only lasted 18 years. I make a new blade for it out of galvanised steel sheet, weld it on and give it a few coats of zinc paint. lets hope i get another 18 years out of it. I suspect that the old hardwood handle won’t last that long? Self reliance is all about making do and doing with what I can make.

This is just one more of the many jobs that have been on my to-do list for some time now. I seem to cross one off and Janine adds two more. We can never get to the end of the list, but it’s fun trying and doing most things ourselves. It beats working for a living.

Best wishes

from the Artful Bodger