International Wood Fire Conference,  Flagstaff AZ
(download the msword file)

First take out your pencils and program book.  Malcolm is always spelled with 2 Ls and never a B or E. 
Two years ago at the symposium Japanese Ceramics: Cultural Roots and Contemporary Expressions, at the Ceramics Program at Harvard, a young potter from NH came up to me and asked: “Why bother?”
I knew immediately what he was asking, but no one had ever said it so directly.  His question was, why bother firing glazed pottery with wood?

My work has been mostly glazed and wood fired over my whole career.  I fire with pine for only 24 – 30 hours in 3 chambers so the ash effects are subtle in the front and modest in the rear of each chamber.

My answer was not about my work directly but about the history of pottery.  Until about 100 years ago or so, all pottery was fired with wood, charcoal, dung, straw, and perhaps some coal.  Oil, gas and electricity are all modern methods for firing pottery.

When I go to a museum I look at the proximity of the historical pot to the fire in order to understand the people and the culture that created each pot.  Was the pot made from highly refined materials, and completely protected from the fire?  Or was it made with coarse materials and fully exposed to the fire?  Or something in between?  High temperature or low?  Was the pot made in a period of high culture, or low?  Did the potter control all aspects of the pot or was it the result of a group effort?  We can get a sense of these issues even through the glass of the display case.  We can understand the attitude of the person who made the pot.

I am strongly influenced by 7 years under Japanese teachers.  I don’t want to go back to historical models, but by firing with wood my work “may” measure up to historical qualities of glaze surface, color and texture.  Glaze quality depends on many things, among them iron content in the clay and clay color; the glaze ingredients; glaze thickness; rate of temperature increase, which affects the size of the bubbles within the melt; atmospheric conditions throughout firing and cooling; final temperature; duration of cooling, etc. Then there are the effects of the flame pattern, the volatilized salts in the wood, the fly ash, and wood ash deposits.  Each chamber of my kiln fires at different rates with significant differences from front to back.  My glazes work at cone 10 at the back floor all the way to cone 14 at the top front.  My kiln weighs 30,000 pounds and cools for 5 days.  I like the risk of the wood fire, giving up control for the pot to become itself.  I like the soft melt at the back of the chamber, and I like the juicy melt of the high temperature at the front. I like being part of the process.  Gas kilns just don’t do it for me.

When I moved to Japan in 1967 after doing an MFA in Japanese ceramics, I might have studied Kyoto porcelain, or Iga ware, but Karatsu met with my personality.  I like to make pots, and fire them, lots of them, and for use.  I am happy firing through the night, but only one night.  We all have to do what  is right for each of us.  I like the unspoken communication that takes place when a pot is passed around a table and each person takes something different from the experience.

Now I am close to retiring from functional pots, not stopping, but putting my energy into sculpture.  I am extruding Georgia brick clay, altering and assembling forms to fire at cone 3. I bring the whole kiln up to temperature 2 or more times in 24 hours, using no shelves but not tumble stacked.  I am seeking soft matte black surfaces with some reds peeking through, and the random effects beyond my control.