How to BISQUE FIRE a pottery kiln | POTTERY 101

Okay, I swear to God, every single time I start setting up to film a video, a little fly comes into my studio and buzzes around and it won't leave and I can't find it ever. I can see it. Can you hear it? It's like a curse. I need you to leave. Go up, go up, go up. No, go up, go up, go up. Yeah, boy. I win, since we're here. I need to load all of this stuff Hi and welcome. My name is Lilly. I am a ceramicist here in London. I don't know how I'm going to do it. It's different to my usual load of work. I usually have loads of cups and bowls and stuff and this is just a whole lot of bigger things. Come with me as I solve the puzzle of it and we'll work it out. We'll work it out together. It'll be fun. This is going to be a bisque firing. Everything can touch in the kiln. We're going to talk about loading. We're going to talk about tips and tricks. We're going to talk about things that I know that go right and go wrong. Let's just, let's just hope for the best. It's a puzzle. It's a puzzle. Let's solve it together. Let's go. Let's very quickly talk about what a bisque firing is and what the function of it is in ceramics. Right now, the clay is at a stage which is called greenware. It's unfired clay. Any item that has been made out of clay at any stage of drying is called greenware. All of them have dried for over a week so that they are bone dry. They feel completely dry to the touch. There is still some moisture in the clay and that is the point of the bisque firing. So we put the kiln on a low slow ramp up to somewhere around a thousand degrees celsius and in that process all of the water that is trapped inside of the clay gets released and it changes state. It changes from clay into ceramic at around 600 degrees celsius. So the point of a firing is to get these pieces from clay to ceramic and from there you have what's known as bisqueware and bisqueware you can glaze on top of. So anyway, that's kind of what bisque firing is. This thing is the tallest thing that I need to go in the kiln and I think it's about the size of the kiln. So we're going to put that in first and then from there we can work out how we're going to load the rest. These things aren't as tall as this thing but they are also quite tall so yeah we're just going to have to have a little play to start with. Very quick recap about kilns. So this is an electric kiln. It's a top loader. It's my little kiln. I have a slightly bigger one as well. It's from Northern Kilns and I love it. She's 28 years old which is amazing. I'm 29 so the idea that this was made the year after I was born was just, it was wild. This is kind of where the guts of the kiln are. These are the elements around the outside. Down the bottom we have a kiln shelf which is about this far off the very bottom of the kiln. It's being held up by three props. One, two, three. And the same area is that we put the kiln props all the way up as I'm stacking the kiln. It's a thermocouple inside which is like a thermometer for the kiln. It reads the temperature as the kiln is firing. Around the outside here this looks a little bit messy but it's a ceramic fibre which is insulation and I have put this around here because it used to be attached to the top up here but over time the glue has worn off because this kiln's old you know. So I have them here. It just helps to keep some of the warm air inside of the kiln instead of escaping through like tiny gaps around the top. Right let's get that big vase and see if we can get it to fit. Here we go, big baby. Okay she fits, no problem. To start with I'm going to remove these kiln props so that we can fit everything in. So we have this big one but there's quite a lot of stuff that I want to go in the kiln that's not as tall as this so I might do a few kind of like half shelves. A lot of the time with flatware, so plates and platters and things like that, I would fire them standing up but this guy is made with coils and I'm not sure of its strength so I'm gonna fire it lying down by itself at the bottom. And then I'll stack a few more flat things around it and then put a half shelf on top of that. For bisque firing things can touch so you can stack certain items. So like something like this I'm happy to stack them because they are fine, they're not going to crack with the weight of each other because they're just so little. Put a few inside of it as well and then let's put a shelf on top of that. You just need to make sure that your props are taller than the items that you have stacked underneath the shelf and you can check that with a ruler. I've got this weird little half shelf that I broke one time so it's actually very handy making space for things like this which take up the whole room but not wasting all of this vertical space so I love this guy. Right, next layer. I've made this beautiful terracotta... I've made this beautiful terracotta coil vase which I'm really obsessed with and I hope that it goes well in the kiln so let's get that guy in. We've got another vase as well. So they're touching each other but they're not touching the elements on the side. I'm filming this video next to the kiln which fired yesterday and it's genuinely boiling in this room so I had to take my little jumper off. Right, I'm gonna do some stacks of platters on the side here. Let's put this one in here a little bit. I said in my loading and glaze firing video that loading a kiln for me is just like a puzzle. So you're sort of problem solving the whole time trying to work out what works and what doesn't. So we've just kind of shimmied that around to make room. Now that guy fits which is very satisfying. Yeah okay let's get the platters in. So this platter obviously it's massive but we can fire it on its side like this and I know it feels crazy, it feels wrong but trust me you can fire things on the side and for some reason it works. I did like a little series of shorter videos on this if you are on my instagram or tiktok or youtube shorts you can find my explanation about firing plates sideways on there. This guy too I'll put in the side. They're actually wider so maybe I'll put that in the side. When I was making this a few little cracks came and I think I resolved it while the clay was still wet but I am nervous about it so if this guy gets a few cracks on the side I don't know if I'm going to be surprised but I will be disappointed for sure. This piece is maybe one of my favourite pieces I've ever made. It's a strawberry platter obviously. I made all the strawberries with sprig molds and then made the tray with a plaster slab mold which you can see in this video here. So this I'm gonna fire on the side as well as well as the same shape platter and no strawberries. This one here it feels much more precarious than these two to fire on the side because it's made with a slab here and then these bits are coiled so I'm a little bit worried about the strength of it but we'll see. I might be making a huge mistake. Hopefully I'm not. And then these two I'm going to put in on the side but facing the other way. Oh it's so stressful man. Okay they're in. What else can we fit in here? Yeah and we can put a bowl on top. Maybe we can put a bowl on top of that. So I've got some things that I want to stack inside of this big vase here. I've got these candlestick holders which I'm going to put inside of this vase. Put this here. Oh that's amazing that that actually works. I've just found another oval platter that I really wanted to go into the firing. I don't know if I can unless... Can you hear the dogs going nuts? My um people who I share my studio building with. It's their dogs. These two. They're lovely. They're having a good old bark at each other. Try and slide you in. Okay amazing that's that worked. There's a bit of room around within the pool down here. I don't know if you'll be able to see it but it has a bit of airflow available to it which is great. Okay this guy can go. Yes it still can. This is great. Can you fit on there? You can. Can you fit on there? Yes you can. This one is less important that I get into this firing but I would like to. I really believe in getting as much as possible into a kiln at once because it's a lot of energy to fire a kiln. I mean we can't fill that up actually. Squeeze these into this gap down here. This might be a record for how many items in one firing I've squeezed. I'm just going to double check that this is going to fit. It is very tight. Let's put this in first. It's all very precarious. I love a bit of risk taking. I love to feel on edge whenever I put the kiln on. How about this? Right. Does this fit? I think that's too tight there. Jesus. Okay that works. That works. That works. All right. Love that. We're gonna turn this on now and I will see you in a couple of days when I am unloading it. From here the camera looks like at a really bonkers angle so I'm sorry in advance. I'm a little worried about this one being on the side but I think it's going to be okay and this one. Can you imagine if I like tipped that and I'm just going to move these now. Right. Stop rolling. And this one I mentioned earlier is crossed. They don't come back to haunt me. Let's turn this kiln on and go from there. The dogs just won't quit. Unfortunately these two vases, as much as I want to fire them, they both have cracks so I'm not really willing to get them in the kiln. That's a pretty big crack on the surface of this piece and this one has a similar one and I have a bit of a rule where I check pretty well for cracks before they go into the kiln just so it means that I can, you know, not waste precious energy and power and resources on something that essentially isn't functional. If you don't fire something, if it stays as clay, if it stays as clay then you can reclaim the clay and use it again to make something else. But as soon as you put it in for a bisque firing then you can't reclaim it at all and unfortunately, I mean I really love these pieces and I'm quite attached to them, especially this big one, so I'm just going to sit with them here in my studio for a little while until I'm ready to put them into the reclaim bucket. But sadly they aren't worthy to be fired. R.I.P. This is the program for my bisque firing. It's got no delay. This goes 65 degrees an hour until it reaches 550 degrees and then we're going to speed it up at 200 degrees an hour until it reaches 950 degrees. No soak and then it ends. So let's go start. It's been two days. The kiln is nice and cool. We're gonna open her up and see how everything went. I'm genuinely quite nervous about this one but fingers crossed. Okay. Oh my god. I'm so excited about this. We have this guy. It all kind of looks like a wheel. I see no cracks. This terracotta guy. Look at this beautiful orange of the terracotta. So nice. Got another one of these bowls. Lovely terracotta. These ones I feel like are slightly higher stake. A big coil vase. Well I love her. I'm so so so happy. I like this tray. I think that's very lovely. Strawberry platter. It looks good. Wonky place. The wheel bowl. This big guy looks good. I don't see any cracks. And the big terracotta one. This one I was genuinely very worried about cracking but I don't see any. Which is great news. Look at that. I'm gonna remove these from being such precarious leaners. Just a simple oval plate which also has no cracks. This one here. It looks good. And see how cool it is in there. This guy. I threw this on the wheel. Oh I'm so happy with it. One last coil platter. Oh ---- it's cracked. Oh it's catastrophic. And then the last bit. That's it. Thanks kiln. You know what I've got to say. Now that it's all here together I'm I'm pretty happy with it. And I'm actually kind of amazed at how much I was able to get into the kiln. Despite having had that kiln for like six years or something. I'm still I'm still impressed at how much it can fit. This guy was the main casualty obviously. Well there you go. I won't be firing that in the glaze firing. Winsome you lose some in ceramics. This one obviously a loss. This stuff I've got to say pretty big win. I am really excited to do a terracotta glaze firing. I actually haven't used terracotta before in my life so I'm pretty happy so far with how these things have turned out. If you would like to know the next steps on how to take these pieces from viscware to being glazed then you can check out this video here. There's a playground outside my studio and it just sometimes sounds like you know there's an emergency going on. But it's just kids playing. Kids are hectic man. Either it's a fly or it's children yelling outside. You know I can't win with the sound in the studio. Please do let me know if you have any more questions about this firing. I'm very happy to answer them. I'm sure I've missed things I always do when I'm doing these videos. Things that I don't think about. So feel free to just pop that down in the comments. What one's your favorite piece? I think this one's my favorite. A coil pot. Thank you. Follow me on instagram and tiktok. I'm at Maeceramics and subscribe to my channel and like my videos. It makes a really big difference. Thank you very much for joining me and see you in two weeks for another video. Ciao!