These are the before and after pictures of the Anagama firing
from the Thanksgiving weekend firing last year. It had been
16 years since the last firing! I took 4 days to load, with Kai glazing and
passing pots to me.
My knees were killin' me! Next time I plan to build a mock-up of the kiln interior
so that I can pre-plan the load by putting the work on wood shelves outside the
actual kiln, allowing time to think about it all... and get things placed better so that
the actual loading would go quicker I think.

At the back of the kiln a shelf stands on a single brick,
wedging against the kiln walls.
The pots are placed on shells that are filled with wadding.
some of Kais' tiles are on the floor, and Isaos' pots standing.
Some of these have Dons' ashes wedged into the clay.
It fires cooler back here- there are some mountain clay
pots here,and some shino that may fire blue.
After firing, ther are some blues,
although they weren't hot enough really...
and are too rough.
Before firing, we tried some straw from Michelles pampas grass...
it was a bit messy, should have been trimmed says Rikio.
It felt like I was not filling the space well,
just getting the hang of it again.