Courtney Martin Pottery

The first firing was a success! The pots look great, and I learned a lot about how my kiln fires. I’ll have new images of pots in a few weeks.

It has been an incredible project building this wood kiln. I built the shed this past winter (2007). I used almost entirely recycled materials that John Geci and others tore off of the old iron studio up at Penland School of Crafts. My posts are locust logs from our property. I also has tremendous help building the shed from Jake Chamberlain, John Hagy, and Sara Runkel.

Will Ruggles designed my kiln. It is a design he has worked on for many years. It is a climbing kiln, designed to fire evenly, efficiently, and with relative ease. I am very lucky to have such a beautiful design.

Hagy stoking the kiln.

Me excited about firing!

Naomi checking the cones.

Michael preheating.

Here is what the kiln looks like while I stack the unfired pottery

Glad to be done with the bricks!

John Hagy and I laid the bricks for the chimney. It goes through the roof of the shed, and is 15′5″ in total!

Next I layed brick vertically to form the walls of the kiln.

After the arch is all bricked up, and the keystone is cast, I dropped the form and pulled it out. Jasmine is sitting in the freestanding arch. Its a beautiful site!

After the form was set on the kiln it was time to build the arch. I had a lot of help from John Hagy!

After laying the foundation it was time to put the form on. Michael and I had built the form a couple weeks prior in John’s shop. I had lots of help moving it from the shop to the kiln site.

My bricks arrived in the beginning of May. I began building right away. I had lots of help on the foundation of the kiln from Michael Hunt. He and nis wife Naomi Dalglish helped me lay the entire foundation, and the flues.