Primitive pottery 3: Firing pottery in a camp fire ⚱️

I've had to wait for an opportunity to fire my pottery for a long time now. Those who follow me on Instagram may already have seen that recently it finally presented itself, in the form of our holiday home in Denmark that had a fire place in the garden.
I had brought a lump of my self-refined clay with me that I made on this video:
• Primitive pottery 2: R...
... but we also visited the clay pit "Gram Lergrav", where visitors can dig through layers of black clay for 10 million year old fossils of sea creatures. We found a couple of ancient seashells and I got to take home a nice ball of fine clay.
After some initial problems with drying cracks (due to me being too impatient), I was able to produce, dry and fire three batches of various vessels and implements over the course of two weeks. Thanks to the local clay source, I even had enough material to get a bit creative.
I suffered no losses during firing and got to take home these self-made souvenirs:
- three bowls, one beaker and one small saucer/plate
- a pot with lid,
- a ball-shaped, lidded storage vessel,
- a sieve and a spoon,
- a dice that really loves to roll sixes, and
- a short pipe (fired with the elder branch still inside as an experiment)
A couple of things I learned along the way:
- Don't try to dry unfired pottery in the wind and sun. It will dry unevenly and develop cracks due to uneven shrinkage. You may get away with it in the beginning, when your greenware is still very wet, but after that your pots need to dry slowly and evenly.
- For similar reasons, try to keep your wall thickness consistent, including the bottom, and dry your pots upside down as soon as the rim can take it. At first I kept inadvertently producing pots with rather thick bottoms, which led to the thick parts drying more slowly than the walls, which in turn led to the aforementioned drying cracks.
- If a pot cracks during drying, there is no way to fix it. Believe me, I tried it. Just turn it back into a lump of clay and start from the beginning.
- The back of my fingernail turned out to be a pretty good burnishing tool. The clay tends to stick to it much less than to even a smooth stone, which allowed me to do this at an earlier stage, when the clay was still rather wet and soft. It will wear down your fingernails, though. I later discoverd that acorns work very well for this purpose.

[@MakeItPrimitive]

Just a reminder: As always, this is a silent video with subtitles. Please turn on the video captions for my notes and comments.

[@williamwhite9481]

They look so good! Im getting a bunch of firewood to try another firing. The last time I tried just the outer layer of the clay was just barely fired. It wasn't usable. I think I need to make the fire bigger and let it cook longer. Im definitely getting closer though. The first two times I tried I put the vessels in too soon and they blew up. This time there were only small cracks, so next time I'll go even slower and let it burn longer with a bigger bed if coals. Thanks for the video.

[@butterflygroundhog]

you've got an amazing quality of clay and some great skills. I wish I could have your video editing skills

[@asilvestrandome]

I learned to make vessels with the same technique but but haven t fire them is one thing really want to try , may be next year. really nice videos.

[@jzjzjzj]

nice lake

[@Noniinthebush]

Hi, do you use temper?

[@MakeItPrimitive]

Not on the pieces in this video, but I have since started using it, because I want to build larger vessels. I found a source of brittle granite nearby that I grind up and mix into the clay. This will probably be on one of my next videos.

[@Noniinthebush]

@@MakeItPrimitive thank you so much for the reply 🙂

[@Noniinthebush]

I have shale near where I live, that could maybe make good temper. I’ll give it a go. I’m a beginner but I love the primitive way.

[@airforce9872]

What do you plan on using the sieve for?

[@MakeItPrimitive]

No plans at the moment. It just seemed like an interesting piece to try and a potentially useful tool to have. It works well, but I have some improvement ideas for the next version.

[@Noniinthebush]

Hi, do you use temper?