Ember & Wheel · wood-fired stoneware · Accord, New York
We make pots the slow way — local clay, a two-chamber wood kiln, and sixty-two hours of stoking. Scroll, and the wheel will show you the five forms every pot here begins as.
Form I
Every apprentice throws bowls — only bowls — for their first year. The wheel forgives nothing wider than your hands.
open fast, then leave it alone
Form II
A cup with no handle, so you learn its temperature before you learn its tea. Ours hold ten ounces and one thumbprint.
the pot you actually use every day
Form III
Collar the neck in three passes, breathing out on each one. A bottle is a bowl that decided to keep a secret.
neck in, breathe out, don't rush it
Form IV
Weight rides high on the shoulder, the way the old grain jars carried it. Fifteen pounds of clay, pulled up in four moves.
shoulder first — the belly follows
Form V
Thrown as two bowls and joined at the belly, so the seam wanders like a horizon. We shape the clay. The kiln decides the rest.
never perfectly round. that's the point
The kiln · “Big Ember” · built 2014, 6,400 bricks
Twice a year we load two hundred pots into our two-chamber climbing kiln and feed it three cords of split oak and ash, around the clock, in four-person shifts. No gas, no electric elements, no thermostat — just cones in the spyhole and somebody awake at the stokehole.
By hour forty the front chamber passes 2,300 °F. Wood ash rides the flame through the ware, melts where it lands, and glazes each pot with the record of exactly where it stood. That’s why nothing we make can be repeated: the kiln signs everything.
Firing No. 23 · loaded Oct 2 · opened Oct 9
Two hundred fourteen pots went into Big Ember. A hundred seventy-eight came out whole. These four came out better than we made them. Each is one of one — the kiln doesn’t take requests. Every pot is photographed when the north light allows and drawn in the kiln book the day it’s thrown; where the camera hasn’t caught up, you get the book.
The remaining 174 pots from Firing No. 23 go on the yard shelves at the kiln opening, November 8. Cash box, coffee urn, first come first served.
The glaze library · all cone 10 · wood reduction
Every glaze here is mixed by the bucket from raw materials and tested on the same clay it will live on. The notes are Mara’s, copied straight off the buckets.
runs two inches in a hot spot — wad everything
Oak ash, feldspar, a whisper of iron. Grey-green pools in every throwing line.
stiff. trustworthy. breaks black on ridges
Saturated iron that goes oxblood in heavy reduction and matte brick where the flame is lazy.
flashes peach wherever flame licks it
White slip under a clear ash glaze. The quietest surface in the kiln — until the fire finds it.
no glaze at all. the fire paints it
Bare clay, front row. Ash, ember and shadow do the decorating in sixty-two hours.
oil-spots if the reduction is mean enough
Temmoku-dark umber that drinks the light. On a yunomi it makes tea look like a well.
Learn at the wheel · small groups · clay & firing included
Eight wheels, one wood stove, no experience needed. Everything you make goes through the same kiln as everything we sell.
The yard
Saturdays 10–4, or whenever the chimney is smoking. The next kiln opening is Saturday, November 8, 10 am — Firing No. 23 goes on the yard shelves at ten sharp.