Wearing a mask and holding a shovel, potter Jody Johnstone of Swanville began removing a pile of ash at the front of her pottery kiln on a recent Sunday morning. As she planted the shovel, she kicked up a shower of sparks.
Despite a five-day cooling period, the kiln — a 24-foot-long, wood-fired oven built in the anagama style of Japan — was still warm to the touch. But the heat wasn’t going to stop Johnstone and her crew of four other potters from embarking on one of the most important days of their year: the day they unload the kiln.
On this day, Johnstone and the others are filled with anticipation for the first glimpses of what the swirling, melting ash inside the kiln has wrought on their creations during the eight-day firing period.
This time around, however, the unloading was going to have to proceed slowly. When the glue holding the soles of her shoes together began to melt as she stood inside the kiln, Johnstone knew it was time to take a break.
Anagama pottery — “anagama” merges two Japanese words that together mean “tunnel kiln” — is a technique that has been around for more than 1,000 years. Johnstone studied the technique in Bizen, Japan, and built her own kiln about 12 years ago when she moved to Maine to pursue her passion for pottery.
Since then Johnstone has fired the kiln twice a year, choosing May and October for their temperate weather, missing just two firings in that time. As far as she knows, hers is the only kiln of its type and process in Maine.
The firing lasts almost two weeks from organizing and loading anywhere from 800 to 1,000 pieces into the kiln to building and maintaining the goal temperature of 2,300 degrees Fahrenheit, then allowing the kiln to cool, unloading it and cleaning up. The size of the kiln and the 24-hour-a-day, around-the-clock effort that goes into a firing make anything more than twice a year unreasonable.
Johnstone built the kiln by herself but she doesn’t work the firings alone. Although most of the ware in the kiln is hers, she sets aside space for others, including two regulars, Betsy Levine of Liberty and David Orser of Parsonsfield; a guest potter — this time around it was Simon van der Ven of Lincolnville; and a handful of others who each have work in the anagama kiln.
The group meets at the beginning and end of the process and during one critical point in the firing, but for the rest of the stretch they work alone in shifts, manning the fire and managing the temperature as it creeps upward.
Once the kiln is cooled and the pots are revealed, the group celebrates the successes and commiserates over the losses. And there is loss in every firing, Johnstone acknowledged, with about 10 percent of the pieces that go into the kiln emerging unsalvageable after the firing.
It’s the crew of fellow potters that makes the firings possible. Getting the process right is serious business, but there’s an undeniable sense of camaraderie that builds as the temperature rises.
“Before I was married I always cried when everybody left [after the firing],” Johnstone said. “Now I don’t cry anymore because I have to go clean the house or get the laundry or something, But having the potters here is one of the best parts of it. It’s like the time of year I feel the best, when I feel like myself.”
From hobby to career
Just like the long process of the kiln firing, it took Johnstone a while to realize her pottery hobby was meant to be something more.
The Newington, Conn., native first became interested in collecting pots during a post-college trip to Japan, where she taught English. When she returned to the U.S., Johnstone moved to New York City to work for a Japanese television production company.
There was a pottery studio within walking distance of her apartment, and Johnstone began taking classes. Soon she fell in with a group of potters who were working weekends together to build a wood-fired kiln in upstate New York.
“I just started to fall in love with the process of the firing and the camaraderie,” she said. “It’s just an amazing process that brings people together, and the outcome is something beautiful that we love and that we can make a living with.”
That burgeoning love for pottery made Johnstone realize she wanted to try making a living in pottery. But in order to make the transition from TV production, she knew she needed an internship in wood-fired pottery.
New York potter Jeff Shapiro, who served as Johnstone’s mentor, felt confident enough in Johnstone that he connected her with a teacher in Japan.
That teacher turned out to be Bizen Master Isezaki Jun, who in 2004 was declared a National Living Treasure in Japan. Johnstone spent two years there, learning everything she could about making pottery and the anagama kilns.
Johnstone was 30 by the time she returned to the U.S. in 1995. She began looking for land on which to build her own kiln and saw an advertisement in a pottery trade magazine for a 9¾-acre plot of land, on which a potter had previously lived and built a cabin, barn and studio.
In February 1996 she traveled to Swanville to view the property.
“I wanted desperately for something to work out, and this looked like it would work,” she said. “The house was livable. I knew I wanted to build a kiln, and there was space for it. Then I drove into Belfast and there was the co-op and the movie theater and I thought, this is perfect.”
Building the kiln took about half a year, with a break for winter. The first firing was held in October 1997, and Johnstone has missed just two since, both times while she was pregnant. She and her husband, James Bradney, have two daughters, Daisy, 6, and Gemma, 4.
To look at Johnstone it’s hard to imagine the petite brunette building the huge kiln. But the project makes sense considering her independent nature — the trips to Japan, for example, and her radical career shift, her move to Maine and her interest in a medium she said is perceived as macho because of the labor and typically chunky, rustic look of the final product.
Johnstone said she has changed her aesthetic over the years but will not back down from a process that clicks so well now.
“I’m kind of a rigid person in a way and once I realized the pots are beautiful when they’re really about you, it became so much better,” she said. “I think I fire the kiln the same way. This whole system is rigid but it enables me to pass the kiln off to another person. In a way, it’s some sort of rigidity that lets us relax.”
‘Fire like a king’
As Johnstone set out to build the anagama kiln, she recalled the lessons she learned in Japan.
“I really did everything just like we did because that was a proven path,” she said. “I didn’t want to try to reinvent everything.”
She has made plenty of her own adjustments to the firing process since then, but started with photographs of kilns being built in Bizen.
After picking out a spot for the kiln, the ground was excavated and Johnstone put in steps where the kiln would go. Then, she cut arches out of plywood, connected them with a lathe, built up bricks over the lathe, and burned out the floor. After a series of side ports were created along the kiln, it was ready for firing.
The kiln is constructed for slow heating and cooling, and so ashes and fire sweep from front to back. The inside is stepped so there is more mass in the front and less in the back to create draw.
“I don’t want this to be a fast fire,” Johnstone said as logs crackled in the kiln’s firebox. “My teacher used to say something like, ‘Fire like a king.’ Give yourself time, don’t rush it.”
The kiln is loaded from back to front over a series of four days. Johnstone and her crew lay out each piece and decide what piece should go where in the kiln.
Loading is a cr
itical and strategic process because each pot’s location affects what it will look like. Pots cast shadows on each other. Everything has a fire-face where the flame has come in contact with the pot. Over the years Johnstone has found glazed pots do better in the back bottom of the kiln, where less ash tends to flow. Flatware, which is often loaded with rice straw that creates streaks of red, is stacked together.
The pots are loaded on shelves made of silicon carbide held up by bricks. The fire is lit with a match and builds slowly over a series of days.
The morning of May 14 was the fourth day of the firing, with about seven logs every 15 minutes going into the firebox and the temperature at 1,560 F. The front row of pots, flecked with ash, glowed in the kiln. Johnstone used protective glasses when she stoked the fire and raked the coals. Even the pesky Swanville bugs seemed to stay away from the kiln.
The following day, the crew was stoking 15 logs every 15 minutes. It’s a tricky process to make sure the kiln doesn’t heat up too quickly.
“The hard part, I’ve found, is controlling the fire,” said van der Ven, who was coming off the 4-10 a.m. shift. “It’s like driving a really large boat. With a little boat, you turn the tiller and you go. With a big boat, you turn it and then it’s too far and you go back the other way. You’re just trying not to go too far, get too hot.”
Johnstone uses a mix of maple, ash, birch, beech and some oak. For this firing alone, she used six cords of wood.
“Sometimes I think, oh my gosh, it’s really a lot of wood,” Johnstone said. “But on the other hand it’s provided half a year’s living for us. We’re getting so much work out of it that it seems like it’s worth it.”
Once the temperature on the kiln reaches about 2,200 F, Johnstone closes the front firebox and stoking begins through the side portals. The side-stoking process, which takes about 22 hours of straight work, means the potters each man a portal and feed the kiln with skinny pieces of oak. The wood burns as soon as it hits the inside heat of the kiln.
Once the kiln hits the peak temperature, Johnstone stops feeding the fire. It will take almost a week for the kiln to cool. Then, at last, comes the day that makes it all worthwhile.
Unloading day
One week after the side stoking ends, the kiln has cooled down enough to open the door. Anticipation among the potters, however, has heated up. It’s unloading day, and each potter will find out what survived and what was lost.
Orser stands near the kiln as Johnstone finishes removing the bricks blocking the entrance. He compares the anticipation he was feeling to Christmas in July.
Christmas? Sort of, if one is willing to accept some broken presents and a measure of discouragement when favorite pots have cracked or fused to a shelf.
Wearing a pair of gloves, Johnston removes the bricks from the kiln’s entrance. She steps into the kiln and makes a quick assessment.
“There’s pretty heavy loss on the first shelf,” Johnstone tells the onlookers. “One of David’s bowls is pushed back and it must be stuck to whatever’s behind it.”
Losses are expected, especially in the areas of the kiln close to the firebox, but they’re still disappointing.
“This would have been a nice one,” Orser says, walking away from the kiln with a tall faceted vase that had cracked into two pieces. “This is a high-iron clay body, and sometimes they don’t do that well.”
Orser throws it into the shard pile, several feet high after 12 years; it lands with a crack and a smash.
A few minutes later Levine emerges from the kiln with a successful piece, a small fan-shaped vase.
“Yay, pots!” she says, smiling. “I couldn’t wait for this day. I kept waking up last night.”
More pots emerge. Some are cracked or have fused together. Johnstone has to chisel some of the pots off the first shelf. Some are useless, others are salvageable.
And some come out as close to perfection as it gets. As expected, the ash has left drips, odd designs and rusty, earthy colors to make each pot an original. That’s one of the reasons potters are drawn to anagama kilns.
“It’s what the atmosphere does for the pots,” van her Ven says. “It’s very specific and recognizable, yet there’s a randomness to the ash deposit and glazing. Most of my work is very precise, very controlled, thin, fine porcelain, but this is heavier and gutsier. As an artist it stretches me and I really have to give it over to the process.”
After Johnstone realizes the soles of her shoes were coming apart, she takes a break to let the kiln floor cool. Johnstone walks with a visitor to her gallery, looking over her shoulder at the group chatting near the kiln.
She was hoping the potters would keep talking rather than continue the unloading process without her. Johnstone doesn’t take notes during the unloading, but remembers what pieces and materials work well in which places inside the kiln. That information will be recalled for upcoming firings.
“The unloading is when all the learning happens,” Johnstone said. “I’ve had nightmares, anxiety dreams, that someone’s started unloading before I got there.”
The kiln was emptied Sunday and the following day the group reassembled to scrape the shelves so they can be reused for the next firing. It’s their last duty together. After the kiln is shut down for the summer, the potters will retreat to their studios to clean, sand and grind the pots to ready them for sale.
Meanwhile, the kiln will sit idle until the potters have created more work for the October firing. Its heat will fade, but the potters’ need to fire it again in a few months will smolder all summer.
“It’s amazing, the kiln is like a magnet,” Johnstone said. “It seems so alive when we’re all here, the potters are here, but the minute they leave it all drains away. It seems like it’s the kiln, but you know, it’s not. It’s the energy we’re putting into it.”
Johnstone will have a Kiln Opening Show and Sale from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 20-21. For more information go to www.jodyjohnstonepottery.com.
All fired up
