Two potters building a communal woodkiln, to grow their studio practices, and provide a learning space for their ceramic art community.
Hi there, and welcome to our Kickstarter Campaign!
We are Two Potters in Hamilton ON, making beautiful objects that bring light and life to homes in our community. We’ve spent our clay careers driving around Ontario with our cars filled with pots, looking for wood kilns to fire them in. After spending a couple years getting to know each other around the firebox of our friends’ kilns, we decided we wanted to work together to build a kiln of our own. This kiln will fuel our businesses and provide a space for our work to grow. It will be a tool for sharing our love of wood firing with our community.
We have the land, we have our foundation poured, and we’ve started building! With this campaign, we’ll be able to bring our dream to life – to create a space to share our knowledge, build relationships, and make wonderfully one-of-a-kind, fired-with-wood pots!
Why a wood kiln?
A kiln is the most essential component for a clay studio. It gives our creations permanence. It provides their function. The kiln is what allows us to make objects that will withstand the test of time and become family heirlooms for eternity.
Firing in a wood kiln is special. A wood firing can take anywhere from 18 hours to multiple days of constant stoking round the clock. It is a traditional process that involves a community of potters working towards a common goal. This historical process continues to amaze us, every time we fire. It teaches us patience, focus, and the value of sweat equity. Our work is largely left with unglazed exteriors – the wood kiln is responsible for capturing the flamework, depth of colour, and surface variation that gives our pots their unique, rustic, and one-of-a-kind look.
For us, the firing is the most important part of the entire making process. As a partnership, we’ll be sharing the work in every firing– preparing wood, stoking the kiln, taking turns on night shifts and learning a lot about each other and ourselves in the process. We’ll also be opening the space up to our clay community – offering workshops and kiln space for those interested in learning about firing with wood. We’re looking forward to sharing our passion with others!
What kind of kiln are we building?
We are building a modified version of an anagama, an ancient style of wood kiln, consisting of a single chamber with a firebox on one end, and a flue on the other. The interior of the kiln will hold 70 cubic feet of pottery. Our plan is to fire the kiln for 24-40 hours, while occasionally firing for shorter or longer durations depending on the effects we are looking for.
When do we start?
Well, we’re already underway!
– We tore down an existing kiln, and saved all the usable materials.
– We delivered the ten skids of bricks to our kiln site.
– We built a wood shed, and have several firings worth of wood ready for use.
– We cleared our land and planned out the site.
– We poured the concrete pad for the kiln and hired a contractor to help us construct the shelter over our kiln.
Now we’re ready to start laying bricks!
What still needs doing?
Immediately:
– Install the kiln shelter roof
– Build the kiln!
Projects down the line:
– Build a small shelter for equipment storage
– Dig an outhouse on the property
Here’s where YOU come in!
We are so thankful for your support, and we’d like to thank you by rewarding you with one-of-a-kind, beautifully crafted objects for your home. We’re not out-sourcing a thing – every reward will be made by hand, by us (and sometimes – by both of us!). We also have a handful of experiential rewards, where you can join us in the studio or participate in a firing! Below are examples of the rewards you’ll receive. Please note that due to the nature of the wood-firing process, no two pieces are ever the same, so rewards may differ slightly from the photos below.
Breakdown of our costs:
We have priced out the cost of our project from start to finish, including building materials, labour, and the costs associated with running a successful campaign (Kickstarter + processing fees, shipping costs, material for rewards, etc.)
We have pulled together as many free materials as we could find, including 1100 bricks, all our insulating blanket, 1/3 of our kiln shelves, kiln posts, the wood shed roof, some angle iron and our stoking door.
Kiln
$870 – Brick Delivery
$650 – Excavation of Site
$950 – Foundation (Gravel + Concrete)
$25 – Plumbing
$1,500 – Arch Bricks + Insulating Bricks
$450 – Cinder Block
$500 – Angle Iron
$775 – Castable
$100 – Hobs
$200 – Kiln Insulation
$150 – Arch Lumber
$1,000 – Additional Super Duty Firebricks
$2,000 – Kiln Furniture (We have about 1/3 of our shelves already, as well as our posts)
TOTAL – $9,170.00
Kiln Shed + Wood Shed
$910 – Materials
$70 – Electricity
$600 – Kiln Shed Roof
TOTAL- $1,580.00
Campaign Costs
$750 – Kickstarter Fees
$750 – Transaction Fees
$2,750 – Reward Fulfillment (Shipping Fees + Materials)
TOTAL – $4,250.00
GRAND TOTAL – $15,000.00
A bit more about us:
Duncan Aird majored in Ceramics at Sheridan College, then did a six-year apprenticeship with Dundas potter Scott Barnim. This profound grounding in thrown and highly decorated ceramics allowed him to confidently open his own studio. Along with his studio practice, Duncan is currently faculty at Haliburton School of the Arts and Mohawk College, where he is the studio technician.
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Emma Smith studied Ceramics at Sheridan College and Haliburton School of the Arts, before working as an apprentice for Gleasonbrook Pottery in 2013. Since then, she and her partner opened a local art & fine craft boutique “Black & Smith Country General” at her home studio in rural Hamilton. She is an instructor at Mohawk College, and teaches surface decoration workshops across the province.
Follow along with our kiln-building progress on Intagram:
@airdpottery
@esceramics
#twopottersonekiln
As with any construction project, there is the possibility that this may cost a bit more than we have anticipated. We have done our best to estimate our expenses as thoroughly as possible, but something could always come up! If and when it does, we are prepared to figure it out.
We have been as thrifty as possible thus far, spending many man hours of sweat equity on tearing down an existing kiln for our bricks, scrounging our friends’ rubble piles for insulation, angle iron and cinder blocks. We are dedicated to this project going through (we’ve already started!) so we will do whatever it takes to make it happen.
We’ll be juggling our studio, shop, and teaching schedules, so our timeline may get jostled slightly in the progress. We are flexible with our finish dates, but also determined to get this kiln built in time for holiday production. We are lucky to have a solid crew of hard working potters (and family) at our disposal (thanks guys!), who are willing to help us meet our schedule, even if it means doing some grunt work.