Smoke & fire

摘要

Over the last 50 years, wood firing by studio potters has grown into something of an international cult. In Australasia and particularly North America, its modern history is well documented and supported by regular conferences such as Cultural Confluence, the wood-firing symposium that was held at The Archie Bray Foundation in Montana, USA, in October 2018. In the UK, however, little has been written about its development and the number of people using the process is low. My experience of wood firing is mainly based on my time at Farnham School of Art, where I studied from 1968 and taught from 1974 until the early 1990s. I hope that telling this particular story will encourage others to build a more comprehensive picture of wood firing in the UK.