About Gas Firing

Michelle has a 60 cubic foot catenary arch gas-fired kiln which she fires to cone 8-10 once or twice a year. The firing takes a day to load, about 30 hours to fire, a day and a half to cool, and another day for unloading and cleaning the ware. Glazing and decorating might take a week and a half. All the glazes are made in the studio. The main ingredients of the glazes are Custer feldspar, Cornwall stone, wood ash, soda ash, local clays, yellow ochre, red earthenware, rutile, iron oxide, cobalt for blue underglaze decoration and of course silica and kaolin. The gas-fired glaze types are illustrated and defined below: For the complete palette of surface treatments click here.