1 - 31 May 2025: Baptism of Fire, A Journey in Wood Firing by Popalini & Jezando

Pop: Aside from both playing about with clay as kids (it lines the bank of pretty much every stream where we live and both grew up in Devon) I started making pots when I was 18 when I got involved in a lottery funded pottery program for youth that aspired to try and continue North Devon’s pottery heritage by encouraging a next generation of potters. It was run by Philip Leach (one of Bernard’s grandsons). We all hand built harvest jugs and made bread ovens that were then wood-fired in a bottle kiln in Bideford park. My very first pots were wood-fired. They were earthenware and got slightly overcooked but I especially liked the toasty ones and was blown away by the delicate pearlescence on the glaze created by the atmosphere of the fire.

I think I always had a strong conviction that I was a potter (long before I had any skills) and with the help of Jez, converted a little studio about ten years ago. It was supposed to be just for me but before I knew it Jez was sneaking out to the studio and throwing pots as often as me and the addiction grew…

 

Jez: Watching a new form take shape, be it slab or thrown and experimenting with small adjustments: the outer curve, inner space, shape of the lip or foot ring can completely change the feeling of the pot.

You make under one name; how did this collaboration come about and what made you decide to make pots as a partnership rather than individually?

Pop: Throughout our relationship we have often worked in creative partnership - it comes naturally. Before we even got together we worked with each other on artistic projects - I helped design some of Jez’s album covers and he taught me how to make and play around with pinhole cameras for a project I was doing at uni. When we both began making pots we immediately started discussing ideas about shapes, making processes and even sometimes worked on each other pots.

However, we still started out as two separate entities. The more entrenched we got, the more we influenced each other, testing design ideas, glaze recipes and firing methods together. The edges of what was mine and his got blurrier and blurrier and we decided to stop telling people who made what and took co-ownership of all our pieces.

Jez: I admire how Pop finds balance in her pieces which communicates a certain calm: shoulder to foot, belly to spout. The pots she creates have a feeling of being familiar, ancient even, but at the same time something new - a confluence of influences and experience that have risen/alchemised into a new form.

Pop’s approach is to drastically push boundaries, be it with the size of pots, freeness of decoration (when she chooses to) or complexity of kiln packs - she is unafraid to take risks. Even if these fail she searches out new thresholds, new territory and opens up pathways that would have otherwise been hidden.

Pop: I love the way Jez sees shape and pattern - despite our similar tastes: it’s different from me. It stretches my ideas and keeps me excited. Jez has brought lots things to the table like carving pots and chattering - both of which are beautifully accentuated by the wood-firing process. Jez is peaceful, stoic and methodical and this comes through in his pots and he brings these qualities to things like glaze testing and kiln building too.

 

Pop: It’s physically challenging (splitting and stacking tonnes of wood, sleepless nights firing it and having your eyebrows seared off from the shear heat of stoking it) and there are harsh losses (glazes blistering or not melting sufficiently in too hot or cold spots, pots getting knocked into each other by firewood, bloating or dunting if heated or cooled too fast).

It’s all worth it when you get an absolute gem. Maybe the ash hits the pot in such a way to accentuate a form or bejewel it, or a beautiful subtle flame path is revealed on a pot. The atmosphere of the kiln might bring out an iridescence in the clay-body or glaze.

Another very rewarding element is the way a kiln brings a community together in order for the firing to happen. It’s collectively a very big and sustained effort but it’s also like a celebration - harvest festival of pots - and a chance to share ideas - especially as, as potters, we often spend days hived away alone in our studios making pots.

 

Jez: Yes. In 2018 we visited Japan and fired a wood kiln for the first time. The dual experience of firing with wood whilst being immersed in the rich cultural and pottery heritage of Japan felt like an awakening of sorts - a feeling like “This is it!” From this first firing we both knew that we would have to find a way of building our own kiln. From then onwards we started considering designs and stock piling kiln bricks.

We choose to build a train kiln because we wanted rich unpredictable surfaces like you’d get from an Anagama (Japanese tunnel kiln), but wanted the kiln to be more efficient on wood consumption and ideally quicker to fire.

You have fired in many kilns, in both Japan and the UK, which kiln have you enjoyed working with the most and why? And where have you experienced the toughest firing to date? 

Jez: We really enjoyed firing with Peter Seabridge in Japan. His Tokoname style Anagama and studio are beautiful - old school Japanese. He has a technical mind, truly knows his kiln and knows how to get the best out of it so we learnt a lot. He uses specific clays and glazes in different parts of the kiln and could explain his firing process so clearly that he could just leave us to it for large stretches of time despite at that stage us having hardly any experience.

We got some beautiful pots out of it with as much ash on them from the two day firing as we got from a six day Anagama firing in Tamba.

 

Pop: Our most difficult firing was one of our many firings of Bridie’s Maddocks’ Fast Fire Soda Kiln - she had just had her first baby so wasn’t part of the firing and the two people who were going help us with the firing got covid and couldn’t come at the last minute so it was just the two of us. Usually the waste wood we get from the saw mill to fire this kiln is in nice thin sticks so we didn’t expect to do any prep. Not this time! It was in massive chunks!

We split wood all night while simultaneously firing the kiln and were pretty much insane with sleep deprivation and physical exhaustion by the morning. To add to this when the birds began to sing and the sun came up it one of the hottest days of the year! I vividly remember swaying on ladders brains half melted spraying the soda into the kiln. We hoped to be done by the evening but we just couldn’t seem to get the final bit of temperature we needed to get the final cone down so we had to fire into the following night - it was torturous.

 

Jez: All the kilns we have fired have been interesting, in a way like playing different instruments and the difference is largely down to the architecture/design of them. Each type of kiln offers specific opportunities of what it is possible to achieve from it. But there are heaps of variables aside from the design which will massively effect the way the pots come out - the list is fairly endless. For example the length of the firing, the temperature you fire to, the clay you use, the glaze you use, the amount of oxidation or reduction at specific stages, how you pack the kiln, the weather, the atmosphere, the wind, the firing group’s dynamic, the type of wood you use, the size it has been chopped to, the dryness of it and the stoking patterns.

Pretty much any wood-kiln in our experience can bear beautiful pots if fired well but it usually takes a while to get to know the kiln and work out what you want from it.

What is it about wood firing that made you fall in love with it?

Pop: Firstly think we might both be pyromaniacs.

But mostly it’s the way wood-firing melds elemental forces with the handmade to produce something that is almost beyond the man-made. The fly-ash and volatile salts from the fire accumulate on pots that lay in its path and fuses with the clay melting into a kind of glaze - usually on just one side - leaving an anticipated but not entirely predictable ‘decoration’, often accentuating the form. The roaring pulse of the kiln as the temperature increases and the searing heat from the bed of white-hot embers that build in the firebox are primally hypnotic and euphoric to the sleep deprived mind.

The process always feels like a rite of passage both for us and the pots. If lucky, it produces surfaces that resemble the beauty of nature - from lichens, to the sky at night, to weathered rocks.

 

Jez: Most Western wood-firing techniques borrow from the East (Japan, China and Korea largely) so it’s similar. But in Japan everything is more specific: the type of wood you use, the pottery traditions of the area and how to handle and fire the local clay and specific kiln - information that will have been passed down generations and slowly evolved - honed and ancient skills. In Japan there is more ritual to firings too. For instance, potters almost always offer a prayer, sake and salt to the kiln gods before lighting the fire.

 

Pop: Liberating and nerve wracking! It’s the culmination of about 5 years of planning, designing and building. Along with about 6 months worth of pots! Thankfully it payed off and we got some exciting pots out (some big iridescent bowls and tortoise shell like carved boxes) along with some casualties (the front two big Tsubos bloated from heating up too fast!)

 

Jez: I think there’s just an inexplicable drive to keep making and improving our pots deep within both of us.

Pop: We look at pots everywhere we go from friends’ houses to unusual little museums.

 

Jez: Yoji Yamada - a wood-firing slipware potter in Shigaraki - we carefully brought back a few of his pieces with us from Japan: they are smoky and beautiful; fired stacked with rice husks.

 

Pop: One of Nic Collins’ bellied Devon Jugs glazed in a peachy Shino. It feels very grounded and feminine.