By Markus Böhm

«That kiln there is about had it. A person wouldn’t think so, but now it is.

I know the shape that it’s in.

I know what it’s built of.

But, for some reason a kiln never burns good until it’s just ready to fall in. When it reaches that stage, it just does better work than it has any time before.»

Lanier Meaders (1967)¹

Reading this quote I asked myself, if sometimes we need a kilns life to get the experience to achieve the results, that we dreamed of before it was built…

After 19 years of usage with salt and wood the walls have a thick glaze running down them and accumulating in brown lakes on the chamber floor, in places up to 2 cm (more than 3/4 inch) in thickness. When I built this kiln in 1987 I was young and rookie I thought I would create the best kiln that was ever built on this planet but actually had not much experience and even less knowledge about what happens in such a machine while burning it. Reading »Pioneer Pottery« by Michael Cardew and »A Potters Book« by Bernard Leach only provided me with some of the very basic information. Detailed German language publications about woodfiring did not exist (and with one exception still does not). In 2005 I thought about dismantling the kiln, salt and ash had washed the mortar out of the gaps (as Fred Olsen told me, commercial available mortar usually contains flux, so for salt it is the best to mix fire clay and grog on your own), and consequently some arch bricks begun to deteriorate. But I successfully sealed the gaps with my high alumina wadding mix and decided to use the kiln until it will have been completely fallen in, especially because I realised, that my low-quality firebricks still were in a very good condition. The salt glaze had simply sealed and protected them. This process made me free for a lot of other changes I made last and this year. But let’s just start with the beginning.

The very first experiment was in 1985 when I built a kiln with recycled and loosely laid bricks of very different sizes and inadequate quality with a much too short chimney. It did not reach temperature. The second attempt was more successful, a top loader with two oil burners and a small side stokehole for wood. But it was difficult to get the fuel and to repair the burners, which were constructed for heating boilers, not for firing pottery kilns.

At this time it was no question for me to build a new wood-fired kiln for salt glazed stoneware. From the very beginning of my career as a potter I was deeply impressed by old German salt glazed pots, especially those fired in Kassel kilns in the pottery centres of Waldenburg and Bürgel (Thuringia) for their liveliness, warmth, and vitality. Also during my apprenticeship there was a strong interest among the most of us, discussing kiln-building plans and materials until late at night. At this time in the GDR wood was without really alternatives for salt firing.

I was happy enough to find a mentor in Mario Enke during my apprenticeship and also later. He was one of three east-german members of the International Academy of Ceramics in Geneve and well known for his very thin thrown vessels, mostly copper-red glazed with a net of cracks that developed in the skin of the glaze by very strong and immediately reduction mostly in electric kilns. Every time he had a free wheel I was there and enjoyed a very open and inspiring atmosphere together with his employees and practitioners. Mario’s high standards meant that he would cut most of our pots in two to monitor the thickness. I remember him coming home after a journey and throwing all of the dry pots that the other practitioners made some days earlyer against the wall behind the wheel opposite to mine (under the wheels was the space for the trimming scraps).

Another strong influence came from Joachim Jung. During the 1980s he wrote “Drehen auf der Töpferscheibe”² (Throwing On The Potters Wheel), a book I would consider as one of the best that I’ve ever seen on this subject. Unfortunately, it is now out of print and no publishing-house is interested in reprinting it. Joachim was taught in a stoneware factory in Coswig, another German centre for stoneware production (often salt-glazed), situated beside the river Elbe, halfway between Berlin and Leipzig, which closed completely down after 1990. His approach was a more traditional one, with fast and easy throwing of large pots with strong rims. He allowed me to work in his studio for one week. I was surprised how the kind of throwing with sometimes only small differences in hand position can determinate the character of the pots, meaning that the throwing technique we were taught, and even more the ones that we ware not taught, determine the shape of our work. However, his way of throwing was very much in the stile of the “old pots”, that had been a reason for my beginning with Salt’n Wood.

For my kiln I decided to use hard bricks (IIIp) with a second layer of »KL 12«. Those KL 12 bricks were made from china clay and sawdust, not as good an insulation material as IFB, but harder³. The dimension of 4 kiln shelfs when placed together gave the chamber size. I wanted to have an easy access to the chamber, so it is high enough to stand inside and has a door. And that’s why the chamber shape became very far from cube-shaped. Due to my experiences with the first kiln, firebox and ash pit should be as big as possible, so they became a part of the chamber. Much of my kiln design was determined by the ever present shortages of materials experienced in a socialist economy. For example the bricks were cut with a hammer and I had no skewbacks, so I had to make the kiln design as simple as possible. The arch became a roman arch and the dampers were placed between the kiln and the chimney. Today people take for granted the benefit of a diamond saw for cutting hard bricks – it can change the whole design of a kiln!

After some months of kiln building (an engineer told me how a chimney usually is built: two flat layers of brick with an insulation layer between – something like a brick grave) the first firing became a total disaster. The »best kiln that was ever built on this planet« didn’t reach the end temperature. My father mentioned it as a faulty construction. But I’m someone who doesn’t like to give up. Today I don’t know why, but I built in a bagwall and on the top of it I put two kiln shelves that increased the stacking space of the kiln. With some additional changes I continue to fire the kiln today with this same configuration. Learning by doing is sometimes a hard way. But the kiln was a good teacher. Having used it for two years, and having read an article about post-combustion and preheated air⁴ I decided, during the summer of 1989 to remove the second chamber, which I did not use as it fired very unevenly. Instead I built a “warming box” for preheated air. It worked a bit unexpectedly: No savings in time or fuel, but a much better control of the kilns atmosphere.

The last part of my (official) education in ceramics ended in October 1989. I remember me and Ute (later to become my wife) leaving Alt Gaarz for the final week, which included the last tests and the defending of the master-pieces. Our big house was full of life and people. But all of them (including my parents) left the GDR just in this week (like many others before, stacked boxes of belongings was a very familiar sight in these days). So we returned in a cold an empty home together with Utes Mentor, Dietrich Kleinschmidt, who was accompanied by another colleague that he had picked up from a Stasi⁵-Jail. I can still see us all sitting around the large table with a lot of candles that could not light the whole of the large old kitchen, creating a unique atmosphere that is difficult to describe. The time of uncertainty had begun. Dietrich, now living in the Phillipines, was Utes mentor and something like a GDR-woodfiring pioneer. In 1981, together with Jimmy Clark (USA) he had initiated the building of some small kilns during the international ceramic-symposium in Römhild which marked the beginning of non-traditional wood-kiln building in the GDR. During this weekend we expected large antigovernment demonstrations and worried about what would happen. Only some months previously GDR newspapers had welcomed the massacre by the Chinese army of the students in Tiananmen Square. But you’ll probably know how the story went on. The opened wall only some weeks later. Reunification.

I was asked how the living as an east-German potter “under a communist government” was like. I still remember the unbelieving eyes of west-German potters, and having the feeling, that they didn’t really understand. I have to say that this is too difficult a task for me to explain. But I want to pick up some small details. At first you have to understand that we had a lack of almost everything accept the very basic things that are necessary for daily use. All the goods existed, but not always and everywhere. It was important to have a good network and to have something for exchange. Money was unimportant. The ceramic industry of the GDR exported most anything for hard currency. So you could sell most pots, or better still, exchange it for something else unavailable, raw materials for example. My wife had a studio with employees and sold her pots mostly to galleries. When the gallery directors used to arrive, she would display the pieces that they were allowed to buy on a table, and they were quite happy. Something like a potters paradise – but a restricted one. For me the best thing was, that I could experiment and play around without any concern about selling my work. Today I have to spend much of my time for marketing. Time that lacks for the making. Unfortunately I’m not a good vendor. How Lanier Meaders said about his pots: “If they want them, they’re here. And if they don’t want them, they’re still here.”⁶

“Here” means at Alt Gaarz, a hamlet on a peninsula in the rural north east of Germany. A very picturesque landscape with a lot of lakes that were formed during the glacial period. This means: no stoneware clay in this area, and no long established pottery tradition. The clay deposits here can be used for red bricks or, at stoneware temperature, as a glaze.

The state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania has around 10 percent of the area of Idahoe but with double the population. It is actually the sparsest populated area in Germany. This factor allows for additional freedom, and not just under communist conditions. Or as the Russians always have said: Russia is wide and the tsar is far away. Together with the usually sufficient distance to the neighbour this sparseness might be the reason for the relatively high number of woodfiring potters: www.holzbrand.com lists 15 woodfirers here, more than in all the west German states together!

Sure, to begin my potters career in the GDR made a profound effect on me, and there are still things that differ in east and west. At first I use a stoneware clay coming from Frohnsdorf, somewhere south of Leipzig. It was widely used all over east Germany before 1990 and is much different to clays in west-Germany, especially in the Westerwald. A clay with a very high content of Alumina (an alumina-silica ratio of 1:2) and with a high sintering temperature from 1320°C to 1370 °C. But this is not the reason for using it. This clay can be easily, very thin thrown, especially for bigger pieces. I believe that the joy of a potter while throwing is to be seen on the piece. For coming down with the end temperature I tested some west-German clays but had to accept that my skills are not sufficient for this rubber like stuff. Changing back again was like coming home. Most salt-glazers will agree, that a silica ratio of 1:2 is not very suitable for salting. But in the firingÊrange of about 1350°C, with the additional fly-ash, it is possible to achieve some attractive surface effects, often with a huge range on just the one pot (»flashings«), recording the flame path through the kiln. It is a little similar to what other potters do by applying high alumina slips, but saving time. I like it when the work in my studio is flowing fast. No time consuming surface decorating techniques, no bisque firing. It is a process of some weeks, beginning with the preparation of the clay, then throwing and glazing culminating with the firing. The longer the process lasts, the longer and more intensive are my working days. At the end (as my wife says, but I cannot believe it) there is no chance to talk to me.

Before 1990 it was impossible for me (and many other potters in the GDR) to buy readily prepared clay. So clay preparation was a fundamental part of earning ones living as a potter. I just use a small mill to grind the dried clay before adding the right amount of water. Without grinding, the Frohnsdorf clay would contain pieces of whiting and pyrite that were far too big. This is a very simple and, compared with industrial methods of heating and grinding the clay into death, adequate way, that results in a clay with bigger and larger seen particles. Also, it is easy to add additional materials like sand, grog, other clays and what ever you want. To make it short: I don’t like clay bodies that come in plastic bags and are almost too wet to use.

Another east-German pecularity is the use of “Pyrometerkegel” pyrometric cones (in difference to the west-German “Seegerkegel”). Most of my colleagues and I still are using these cones, some 16 years after they were last produced. Perhaps it’s because we are unwilling to learn: you only have to add a zero to the cone number to obtain the bending temperature: cone 132 touches toes at 1320°C. I already thought about arranging a funeral when the last of these cones will have been gone through the fire.

It is my opinion that ceramic magazines and galleries in Germany mostly represent ceramics that try to be art and sculpture. I consider myself as a very traditional east-German potter, who believes that it is more important to transform ones whole life into art than to make some. Although my work can be used, function sometimes is not a priority. I’m constantly experimenting with gazes, clay bodies and slips. If there is sufficient time to prepare them, each firing contains a number of tests pieces placed in different parts of the kiln.