Soda firing ceramics, artist in residence

During my artist residency at Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts in 2024, I experienced my first soda firing. A soda firing is a method of firing ceramic pieces that creates a glaze atmosphere (also called an atmospheric firing) by spraying soda ash or baking soda into the kiln while it is at top temperature. The soda vaporizes in the kiln and creates lovely, organic, and unpredictable glazes on the surface of the ceramic pieces. 

The Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts is a legendary place with deep ties to the ceramics community and an incubator for ambitious ideas by ceramic artists. It was an honor to be selected as part of a crew of artists back in summer of 2024. As a group, we organized the soda firing using the large soda kiln at Watershed. It was my first experience doing a soda firing, which was really thrilling. The soda solution is added to the kiln around 2200 *F and glazes everything inside the kiln. The transformation can be unpredictable, and depends on the magic of the atmosphere and the exact conditions. I experimented with layering some Cone 10 glazes, as well as underglazes, on my wheel-thrown ceramic cups and bowls for the soda firing. I used a Cone 10 porcelain that fired brilliantly white in the kiln. 

It took an entire afternoon to prep and load the kiln, including wadding the bottoms of all the ceramic pieces. Wadding is a simple mix of clay and alumina hydrate that is applied as little clay buttons on the bottom of each piece to prevent them from sticking (literally, they would get permanently glazed onto the shelf without the wadding). 

The soda kiln at Watershed is gas powered, and we each learned how to turn on the gas, light the torches, and monitor the temperature inside the kiln. Once the kiln reached about 2200 degrees Fahrenheit (Cone 10), we added multiple rounds of soda solution into the kiln. It is an amazing and inspiring process, and one that I hope to do again with a group of artists.