It feels odd to be writing this after Sunday’s beautiful post by
with a text written by me, as part of her series Because Creativity, to which we got such a warm response. It now feels like a soft cushion I can lean on to ease the pain of what may come next.Here goes… Sunday evening, during a bisque firing — the first in a few months but the second since the replacement of the faulty transformer — I noticed the kiln wasn’t keeping up. The temperature inside the kiln, as measured by the sensor, was showing 100 ºC below the target temperature for that point in the schedule. Not only that, the target temperature shown on the controller was climbing too fast, as if the controller was, ironically, out of control. Something was clearly wrong.
After last time, I thought things would be ok with the kiln at least for another five years. The transformer having been replaced, business could continue as usual. Except it didn’t.
Radek stepped in, both of us trying to figure out what could be wrong. We stopped the program and restarted it, trying to run only the last two and a half hours or 200 ºC that were left on the firing. We did this a few times (mostly him, me panicking), trying to figure out why the controller was speeding up… every time the target temperature would race up, and the kiln temperature would struggle to keep up and never go up more than a few degrees. At 11 pm, I gave up and went to bed imagining the worst. Radek stayed up another hour (my hero) trying to get the kiln to reach the 1000 ºC target. It never did.
Though the controller was behaving strangely, the kiln seemed to be unable to heat up even when we gave it no time limit to do so. Something is very wrong and we don’t know what.
As I write this (Monday morning), the kiln is still too hot to open so we still can’t investigate further. I am not sure what we will learn when we open the kiln but I know I cannot count on it anymore. Not until we figure out what’s wrong.
What is now inside the kiln has only been fired to around 860 ºC. At 800 ºC, the clay begins to vitrify, so, even though it’s not really a bisque temperature (which is usually considered to begin at 900 ºC minimum), I may be able to glaze the pieces and not have to redo the bisque fire — I don’t know, I would need to look into the implications of glaze-firing a piece that is a few degrees under-bisqued. Although this may turn out to be a moot point since the kiln is not operational anyway…
And that is the good scenario — there is also the very very bad scenario in which the kiln actually went over the target temperature, that the sensor was misaligned and that everything inside the kiln has in fact joined into a single mass of melted vitrified clay. That is too horrible to contemplate and I am trying not to think about it. White elephant…
What I keep asking myself over and over is What now?
It may be too early to draw any conclusions as to what may have happened, but one thing I know for sure — my kiln is not reliable anymore. And, since it is an old kiln it will be very difficult to find someone who will know how to checked it, let alone how to fix it. Kilns are very pricy and buying a new one is not really an option. What now?
What now?
Is the Universe punishing me because I am having thoughts of shifting to something different? Because I am spending more time with my watercolours than with my underglazes? Or is the Universe in fact sending me a sign that it is actually time to shift, to try something new?
In other words, do I see this as a negative thing or as a positive one? Does it even matter how I see it? What am I going to do about it? I’m supposed to be a potter, what else can I be/do? I’m all questions and no answers. I am a big round question mark.
What now?
I guess… we wait. Now, I go for a walk with Radek and the dog. Then, I will get in the car and go shopping. We need eggs and fruit and maybe ice cream for dessert. After that, I will tidy up the studio or I will make a new entry in my visual journal (a BIG “?” in all the colours of the rainbow seems fitting right now). Life goes on…
And after that, maybe the kiln will be cool enough to open and at least I will know if the pieces are ok or not.
And then… well, then we’ll go from there.
Status update: it’s now after 9 pm on Monday and I have emptied the kiln. All the pieces are intact, so there was no overheating — that’s a relief. Not only that, they look and sound vitrified enough. The question of when I will be able to glaze-fire them remains, however. Tomorrow, I will start looking for someone to come and helps us figure out what could be wrong. I suspect faulty coils but there is also the matter of the speedy controller… We’ll have to wait and see.
One more thing: it is now Tuesday morning and before this post goes out to you I thought I would add a short video to show you what I meant above when I wrote that the pieces sound vitrified. Enjoy!
And now that really is it for today.
As always, thank you so much for reading, this time even more so. Thank you for being here, for witnessing my wins and my many fails and my so-sos. Thank you for your patience and for your understanding. When I started writing on Substack, I had in mind a simple newsletter, where I would occasionally send out news and updates from my studio. Over time, however, it has become so much more, and for that I am grateful.
I am not sure where to go from here, but I know I am not alone, and that is no small thing.
If you would like to see my work
I invite you to check my Etsy store where you will find my latest work. I am also on Instagram, though more and more I wish I weren’t.
Não te deixes abater! Sei da tua coragem e sei que não estás sozinha. Se a solução for uma nova mufla, vais tê-la. É uma promessa! 😘
I feel for you. I have been here - Kilns are the bane of my life 🤣. I ended up using a community kiln to fire my pieces until I was very kindly gifted a new kiln by my mum (she's the best!). Your watercolours look amazing and I'm excited to see where they take you. Creativity is like water, it will keep flowing, even if one path is blocked - it will just find another.