Firebox: Shinrin-yoku
Firebox: Shinrin-yoku
About
Wheel-thrown stoneware. Woodfired at a pottery studio in the Tokoname forest, Japan, October 2025.
A vessel, the one piece each artist was allowed to place directly in the kiln's firebox.
19 × 13 cm (7.5 × 5.1 in)
The Making
The firebox is the riskiest spot in a wood-fired kiln: closest to the flame, first to take the heat, first to take a hit if a log shifts. Each of us got one piece in there. High risk, high reward. I was nervous mine would get knocked by falling wood. It survived untouched.
The texture comes from two things: a slip applied after shaping, and a heavy deposit of wood ash, since the firebox takes more ember and ash than anywhere else in the kiln.
My favorite detail is the drip: five lines, almost symmetrical, where melting ash ran down the surface as it formed. Some of that slip was iron-rich, which gives the red tones. There are also small blue shadows and crystals scattered across it, both rare and hard to get in a wood firing.
The Firing
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Made during three weeks at a pottery studio in the Tokoname forest, Japan, a city built on pottery, threaded by a footpath paved with broken ceramic shards and a centuries-old climbing kiln leaning into the hillside. This was my first wood firing, and the studio itself had a small, family feel, like living in a village.
The kiln was an anagama: a single-chamber, tunnel-shaped wood kiln, one of the oldest kiln types in Japan, brought over from Korea around the 5th century. This one had only a front stoke hole, no side stoking. The approach here, taught by kiln master Peter Seabridge, isn't about speed. It's about pacing: watching the thermometer, watching the chimney through a mirror in the window, and judging when to feed it again.
I worked two shifts, both mornings, about 10 hours each. In the first, the temperature climbed from 260°C to 1020°C. In the second, it rose from 1214°C to 1255°C, crossing the 1250°C mark. The kiln peaked at 1260°C. There was no reduction cooling at the end, just a long climb up and back down.
No glaze was applied to any piece. Everything you see on the surface is ash, clay body, and slip.