Meet my kiln, "she's a hottie!"

Maybe you're interested in knowing how I fire my ceramic beads, discs, and vessels. Several years ago when I was first starting out in ceramics (a medium I never formally studied) I would take my ceramic pieces to a wonderful ceramic studio called The Shop. At the time it was on Dundas near Brock St. The owner Michelle was (and still is) incredibly helpful and generous with her knowledge and suggestions. She would fire my ceramics and I would pick them up delighted at the surprise of seeing them glazed and fired. Eventually The Shop grew too populated with ceramicists working in her studio that she didn't have the room to fire pieces that were not made in The Shop studio. I was disappointed, though thrilled to know that The Shop was a growing success story. This prompted me to invest in my own small kiln and I've never regretted it.

So... meet my kiln, it's an electric kiln made by Paragon and bought from Pottery Supply House. I picked it up with a carshare and it sat nicely in one of the back seats all the way home. It can get HOT, really HOT. It fires my ceramic pieces to what's called Cone 6, that's 1222 degrees Celsius and 2232 degrees Fahrenheit! For comparison, most home ovens will work well up to 260 degrees C or 500 degrees F.

Since I work small, it is the perfect size for my work. It sits on bricks in my garage and it's interior shelves are about the size of a dinner plate. Unless I'm firing something tall like a vase, I can usually get 3 shelves-worth of items in at one time. That's actually a lot of little objects!

I'm not going so far as to give it a name, or gender, though I joked with that in this blog title, but it's totally a team player in the Here and Here studio! And should be keeping things HOT for many years to come.