On Tuesday I drove out to Abbotsford and was there about 11.30am. Herman had to drive to the airport so Dave and I were in charge of getting the salt kiln loaded. Actually Dave did all the hard work of deciding how the work was placed and lifting in and stabilizing all the shelves while I busied myself applying wads with glue to all Nora’s pieces. In no time at all we had filled the back and middle areas with bowls and little stoppered ewers by Herman, plates and bowls by Nora and every single piece of mine, including 2 or 3 refires. At that point Dave left to go home for his pieces and I started for home again. Dave planned to fill the front section, place some of the draw-rings I’d made and close the door.

When I left I stopped in at the next farm along Harris Road and purchased a large flat of freshly picked blueberries. Then I found my way to Highway One and drove West to 200th street where I exited to find Greenbarn Pottery Supply. Now I have 10 boxes of clay – 2 of Plainsman H550 and 2 of H570 to mix for further salt pots, some F100 white earthenware clay for my ‘Painting Raiders’ plates and the rest is more D’Arcy clay for my standard slip-painted earthenware jug birds. I also chose several pots of underglazes for the painters.

At 9pm that night Dave went back to Herman’s and lit the 6 burners. They burnt gently all night so that when Dave returned at 6am on Wednesday morning the kiln had already reached bisque temperature. This is such a civilized way to time the firing. We can then arrive in a reasonable time to help with the salting and we’re all done by early afternoon.  Dave lives about ten minutes away from Herman.

When I got to the Venema estate shortly after 10am on Wednesday, cone six was bending. I phoned Nora and she started out from Vancouver with the idea of being there when we began salting.

With similar timing to our last December firing we found that it was time, at cone 8, to start inserting salt burritos by about 11.30am. The atmosphere was in reduction (thanks to Dave monitoring and adjusting the damper and gas pressure) from about 7am.

We tossed in a half-pound burrito of salt at each of four peeps, totalling 2 lbs, left the kiln room while the atmosphere was somewhat smoky for 5 minutes, cleared for another 5 minutes and then inserted another 2 lbs. In this way we used up a little pile of 12 burritos in front of each port, making it 24 lbs used so far.

After about seven saltings we removed the first draw-ring. By the time 48 burritos were used we were seeing quite satisfactory orange peel on my blue slip-coated rings. But Nora and I persuaded Dave and Herman that there would be no harm in adding just a little more to get a good, but not crazy amount of glass. So we had two more saltings. This firing used 28 lbs of salt.

The kiln was allowed to continue firing for at least another 15 minutes to clear and then Dave shut it down and we agreed to leave it to cool until Saturday morning. Nora rounded up her son Rowan and his friend Dara from playing with Herman’s grandchildrens’ go-cart and we all left by about 3.15pm.

So now we must wait patiently until Saturday, imagining how our clays, slips and liner glazes will look this time.

Thank you so much Herman, Dave and Nora for inviting me to share this firing with you. Dave gets the lion’s share of credit for his expert understanding of the workings of this kiln, gently keeping us all on schedule, making scrupulously careful notes, actually doing most of the loading and for getting up at the crack of dawn to turn up the burners so that we could have a more leisurely start to the day. I am so grateful for this chance to fire with salt again and excitedly look forward to being out at Herman’s again for the opening on Saturday.