A community kiln shared by nine studios, where our incense objects are fired unglazed in small batches through the year.
Shared kiln since 2009Nine resident studios
Kiln No. 7 is not a company. It is a kiln — a small brick chamber with a door on each end — shared by nine resident studios who divide the firing calendar between them. When you rent a firing, you get the whole chamber, so the work we make usually goes in alongside another studio's tea wares and small jars.
Unusually for a shared kiln, the firing here is done in reduction: the air supply is deliberately restricted towards the end, which starves the clay of oxygen and pulls iron to the surface. That is what gives our Mist No. 01 its speckled grey rather than a flat buff, and it is why the colour shifts slightly between batches even when the form does not.
Nothing is glazed. Unglazed stoneware stays slightly porous, which is exactly what an incense object wants: the body absorbs a little warmth and smoke over years of use, and the surface darkens where it is handled. The studio considers this a feature. A piece that looks identical after ten years has not been used.
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