September 10, 2026 Post by : Editorial Kiln Life

For a long time, I wanted my glazes to look like the ones in books. Smooth, even, predictable. I mixed test batches, kept careful notes, and fired the same recipe again and again. The results were fine. They were also a little boring. The pots looked like they could have come from anywhere. Then I started firing with wood, and everything changed.

Wood firing introduces variables you cannot control. Ash drifts through the kiln and lands on pots. Flames lick one side of a bowl and leave the other alone. The atmosphere shifts from oxidizing to reducing and back again. A glaze that looked one way on a test tile can look entirely different on a pot that sat near the firebox. At first, this frustrated me. Now it is the reason I keep firing.

The Beauty of the Unplanned

There is a bowl on my shelf that I almost threw away. The glaze pooled on one side and thinned to almost nothing on the other. A streak of ash ran down the inside like a river. I thought it was a failure. Then a friend picked it up, turned it over, and said it looked like a landscape. I have not been able to see it any other way since.

This is what wood firing teaches. You can control your clay body, your glaze recipe, and your firing schedule. You cannot control everything. The kiln has its own ideas. The wood has its own chemistry. The best pots often come from the places where your intentions and the fire's intentions meet somewhere in the middle.

Keeping Notes, Letting Go

I still keep notes. I record which shelf each pot sat on, how long the firing lasted, where the coals banked. These notes help me understand patterns. They do not guarantee outcomes. A pot from the same shelf in the same firing can look completely different from its neighbor. That is not a flaw in the process. It is the process.

If you are new to wood firing, give yourself permission to stop chasing perfect. Make pots you like. Fire them with care. Then open the kiln and see what happened. Some pieces will disappoint you. Some will surprise you. The ones that surprise you are the ones you will keep. They carry the story of that specific firing, that specific day, that specific batch of wood. You cannot buy that in a store. You can only make it, one firing at a time.

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