DISCOVERY OF FIRING THE CADDO WAY
KahWinHut 11-1-2009

To fire my pottery in the tradition of the Caddo potters, I decided I would pit fire my traditional wares. A sort of completely traditional series, where almost every step was done like our ancestors. This has proven to be quite a journey, and an arduous one in that it is not as easy as it may seem. Quite difficult actually. Also there are some differences between my land and the area where the Hasinai would form and fire their pottery. They lived in the woodlands, in less windy areas. Here in the open plains of Oklahoma we have much more considerable wind. I feel that Conventional means must be employed to prevent the wind from blowing into the fire mound so violently. Also another problem I have run across is ground water. The area I live in Oklahoma has considerable ground water issues. An open pit more than a foot deep simply fills itself with water. This makes it impossible to simply dig a pit and fire some pots. Again, conventional means must be used in order to bring the pit above ground yet still protect it from the winds. These modifications to the traditional firing pit run parallel to my idea of "compression" as I call it. Without the time and resources of an entire Caddo village, a single modern potter like myself must use compression methods to achieve the same results that our ancestors did using the most traditional materials possible or the best possible modern analogs.

Please keep in mind that these entries are in chronological order and that over time I learn more correct processes and techniques. Also I learn more accurately the historic manufacture methods and techniques of our ancestors.

KahWinHut 10-17-2009

I attempted my very first in-ground pit firing today using what methods I had researched and the only materials available to me at the time. It will take time to procure materials such as pine needles, dry, seasoned hardwood kindling, etc. At the time, all I have is cedar bedding chips, hardwood pellets for wood stoves, wrapped seasoned fire wood bundles (large pieces), trash paper, cardboard, and tiki torch oil.

On the first attempt, starting first thing in the morning, I dug a 1 1/2 foot deep hole in the ground. This was into solid black clay. Not that I wanted to dig a huge pit into thick clay, it's just that that is all there is here. It is the same black clay I use to make my own black potters clay with. The hole was big enough around to set a 55 gallon barrel down into. So maybe 3 feet across at the top, it ramped in to maybe a little more than 30 inches across at the bottom. After the hole was dug, I put 6 fire bricks in the bottom, flat. My thinking was that the pots should set on a refractory material, and that maybe our ancestors used flat rocks. I thought this would be similar to heating a stone they use to cook pizzas and bread. Low and slow. Even heat. I also didn't think I could put the pots directly onto the hot coals or fire.  On top of the fire bricks and all around them I put 2 inches of the cedar bedding wood chips. On top of that I scattered the hardwood pellets. I poured in tiki oil and started the fire. I was thinking that this would warm the bricks and start a good bed of coals, though this did not turn out to be the case. I put the pots all around the warm fire to dry out. They had NOT been previously bisqued. Our ancestors did not bisque pots in the oven or a kiln.

Once the small fire had burned out I moved the burned materials off the bricks and set the pots down on them. The fire was hardly even smoldering and was pretty much dead. I then built up the smallest kindling I had around the pots. These smallest pieces were still way more than an inch thick and more like the diameter of a tennis ball. Then making a circle around the pots and up over them I kept piling up the seasoned firewood. Then I poured the bedding around with the wood pellets around the sides and poured tiki oil on them and lit it. It went up fast of course. I think too fast.

The fire tried dying in spots and I poured on tiki oil to keep it going. I kept pouring it on, the fire would rage up then die down. When it caught fire sufficiently I waited to let it burn. That is when the "popcorn" started. Small at first the sounds of the pot exploding in the fire got louder and louder. Some shards flew out of the pit. Haha. I successfully discovered how NOT to pit fire. Though, without guidance it was going to take a bit longer to figure out exactly what had gone wrong. I tampered the fire with mud and clay chunks to effectively put it all out. The pots were pretty much earthen gravel at this point. Only the bottoms of the pots that touched the bricks remained. I had more "sacrificial" pots as I called them. I wanted to try another way.

The pots I had put in where made with Hobby Lobby plain grey clay. Who knows what its cone or filler was like. The pots were made by coil method though very small coils over and over again. I do think there were most probably air bubbles in the pots. These were some of my very first. They were all bone dry though.

KahWinHut 10-17-2009

This time I took out the bricks. I lined the bottom of the now hot pit with cedar bedding chips, and hardwood pellets; About 2 inches worth. Poured on the tiki oil. Let 'er rip. When that died down, which was quickly, I stirred it with my long wood stick. It flared back up and again and died down. I threw on some leaves and paper trash to get some flames. It flared up and died down again.

When that all died down and was black, I moved the pots from the rim of the fire down into the blacked ash and "coals". There were no real coals, it was just cedar bedding chips and pellets. I then stacked the seasoned fire wood pieces around into a beehive over the pots like last time, poured on the cedar bedding around the sides, along with the pellets, poured on the tiki oil and lit it again.

This one too got started pretty fast and was soon a roaring fire. Again I'm thinking too fast. Not too long after it all got going, the familiar sounds of imploding and exploding pots was heard. Then it got faster like popcorn and soon it stopped all together. "Time to pull the popcorn out of the microwave", I thought to myself. This time I poured on the entire pile of cedar bedding I had left. To me this was going kill the fire, smother it and let it smolder. I left it thinking it would smoke and smolder out. 2 hours later I come back and it was sort of like a saw dust fire, burning inside itself. Slowing burning away the cedar bedding. So I poured dirt and clay mud on top to tamper it and snuff it all out. 2 Hours later it was still smoking and smoldering inside. I figured it would be fine until morning.

In the morning the only thing that remained of the pots after digging them out archeological style was small shards. No bottoms, some remnant coils. Some of the shards were shiny like glass from where I burnished them. Most shards were ashen black. The bricks made no real difference obviously.

Again, these pots were all Hobby lobby clay and coil method. This time though I did put in some "Caddo Clay" pots as I call it. (very black clay I made from my own land). Pinch pots and long 8" sticks of it to test its shrinkage. The Caddo clay pot made it through with only small cracks. The 8" stick made it through as well, though I doubt it was fired hot or long enough.

KahWinHut 10-18-2009

This morning I started out by making a good fire in the pit with pieces of fallen branches, cedar bedding chips, and pellets. I got it all going, again, by tiki oil and let it die down to coals. This time there were some coals in the fire, as the fallen branches were thick and thin. I took the pots that were sitting around this fire and put them into a small galvanized metal bucket. I lowered this down into the coals, small as they were, and started building up the seasoned wood pieces, again larger diameter than my wrist, around the buckets and up a little over it. I stacked them on end all around the bucket, bon-fire style, put the cedar bedding chips all around that with hardwood pellets, tiki oil it all and here we go again. This started burning very quickly as well. The bedding went up and caught the pellets and the small kindling, and this caught the larger pieces soaked with some tiki oil. Again I think it went up too fast. IT was a tall raging fire for a short while. I could barely make out the couple of pots in the bucket, but I knew exactly what was happening in the buckets when I again heard the familiar sounds of the pots exploding, this time in the bucket, and hitting the sides with a ring ping.

These pots were too Hobby lobby clay, small coil method. When I say small coil method I mean pencil sized coils that were simply scraped together.

I started getting out the hose to end it all when my neighbor Ken came over asking what the smoke signals were all about. I explained to him the pit firing and he was instantly all excited. He was genuinely interested and wanted to see some of the pots. I showed him all the ones i was saving for when I figured out the pit firing and he loved it all. He thought it was cool that I wanted to learn how to do all this and urged me to learn the pit firing method rather than giving up and going with the barrel firing.

When we started talking about the exploding pots, we came up with several reasons why they didn't make it. We thought, primarily, the fire got too hot too fast and we weren't using the right materials. Instead of cedar bedding, large seasoned logs, and tiki oil, we should be using charcoals, saw dust, or pine straw, small kindling sized hardwood sticks and very very small logs about 14" long and 1" in diameter or smaller. No fire accelerant. We also discussed that the wind might be an issue. These were very windy days as every day is in the middle of Oklahoma no matter where you are. Ken said that I should dig the pit deeper, maybe another foot to make it 3 feet deep. I discussed air bubbles in the clay, and moisture. I thought that maybe along with the wind and too fast heat, that the pots themselves might have been made inferior, riddled with air pockets by an amateur pot maker. Also, I had not bisqued the pots as modern potters do. I simply put them by the coal fires like I had read and heard about. I don't know if that sufficiently dried them. So we figured it was either one or more or even all of these factors that caused the explosions. So I set out to do tests to figure out what was what.

KahWinHut 10-31-2009

Going out to the pit after a week of rain I noticed that I had a small ash filled black water swimming pool. Barbie had mentioned siphoning off the water using the hose. I put one end in, and the other attached to the faucet, ran the water, stopped it, crimped the hose with my hand, unscrewed it, and took it to a lower place in the yard and let it go. It worked well, but took about 1 1/2 hours to drain. I then had to shovel out the remaining inch of muddy ash water. I knew a wet pit was not going to help these firings so I poured in an inch of cedar bedding, plenty of gasoline, and let it burn out really good. This steamed out the walls the floor of the pit, but didn't completely get it all. The black smoke from gasoline is not fun either. I let a small fire from twigs I had around the yard to get another fire going to get the pit hot and dry some more. Once that died down, I lined the bottom of the pit with 2 inches of cedar bedding and hardwood pellets again. Tiki oil, and we're off. I kept stirring the pit, and throwing in cardboard boxes and loose trash paper. Made a good bonfire while the pots sit around the ledge. These "pots" were wire cut right off the slab with absolutely no air bubble. They only resembled folded hand pots. There was also a clay pipe, and a small black Caddo clay pinch pot, and a puki made of Hobby lobby clay. The "test" slab cut pots were of hobby lobby clay AND black 5/6 clay from House of Clay in Oklahoma City. I assume 5/6 clay means cone 5 and 6, I'm thinking not cone 05 or 06. So this is high-fire clay, but I think they said it has more grog, but I'm not really sure.

This time I put the fire bricks as shield from each piece. Set on their sides, they made a cross in the bottom of the pit. 4 pieces went on each quadrant of the cross so that each piece was shielded from the other. Doing the same as the last fires for consistency, because these are tests, I built up the wood pieces around the pots in the ashes, lined with cedar bedding, hardwood pellets, tiki oil. Let 'er rip. The fire went up fast then died fast. I think it was the cold and damp in the pit. I poured on more tiki oil then was soon out. It got going with a hit of gasoline. I started thinking, using fuel on the fire is probably not the right way to do it, but I am going to continue doing it for these tests to maintain consistency. I heard a little bit of popping and an hour later, everything had died down.

I dug in and dug out the clay pieces and shards. The red 5/6 clay test "pot" had made it through almost unscathed. The hobby lobby clay test "pot" was a little worse for the wear, but almost all intact. The puki was rubble, and the Caddo clay pot was immaculate. Interesting. It is started to seem like the Caddo clay is ultra high grog and capable of withstanding extreme temperature shock. They must have air bubbles as they were made shoddy. The puki explosion was not surprising. Nothing had changed in the method of firing, the method of forming ( it was made with small coils, hobby lobby clay). The 2 test "pots" were interesting in that they almost made it out alive, except for some stress cracks, and lost small pieces that stuck out. The pipe exploded into tiny bits as well. Again not a surprise. So this told me that the forming method was at least one small factor in the equation. The air bubbles MUST be removed, especially in pit firing.

Side note: The wasps or hornets were very annoying, there were so many it was unbelievable. "Buzzing the tower" The flies decided to all evacuate the air-space and enter my garage. Not exaggerating there were probably 30-40 flies in the garage all on the ceiling asleep. I guess it's the smoke.

KahWinHut 10-31-2009

In the afternoon I tried another method. This time I put 2 test "pots" into the oven along with a small olla made of low-fire white clay from Berchers (in Oklahoma city) and formed by Jeri Redcorn's large coil, scrape method. Also I put in a small bowl made with the same clay and method. I started them at 200 deg. for an hour. Then moved up the temp 50 deg. every 30 minutes until I got to 500 for 30 minutes or more. I thought about transferring them to the gas grill and getting them up to 600-800, but I didn't want to mess with it. Maybe next time.

This time I was out of tiki oil. I put in the cedar bedding, pellets, twigs, paper, gasoline, and lit it. After it died down and I stirred it a bit, I put the pots from the oven into the ashes at each quadrant of the bricks again. This was no small task. The pots were HOT. I must find a method of moving pots more easily from the oven, down into the pit. I saw Maria Martinez's husband using sticks. Wow. Maybe I can perfect a similar method, though I doubt very soon. Once the pots were in, I built up the fire logs over it all, lined wit with bedding and pellets, and twigs and paper. Poured gasoline around the outside of the logs onto the bedding, and lit it. This one took very very fast. I did not have to pour on anymore accelerant; it caught fire and kept going. I threw small twigs in to make it hotter all around the outside and on top. It burned hot and fast again. I heard only 2 pops this time. I was hopeful.

When it all died down it was very dark out, 7-8ish. I went out with my wife holding the flashlights. It is dark in the forest, haha. I shoveled out the pots from the ashes that had all burned down nicely. The test "pots" made it through the firing again slightly chipped. The olla, fired on its side sustained 3 large chip-outs from the down side and cedar bedding was burned into the side. The rest of it survived intact. The bowl, fired upside down, had 1 chip-out of the rim which was down in the cedar bedding, again cedar bedding burnt into the rim. The burned on cedar will not all come off and upon scrubbing the pots with a lightly damp rough sponge; I noticed that a clay film formed on the surface. I don't think these pots are getting fired hot or long enough. I don't think they are getting fired through. I need a pyrometer, not sure cones will serve me correctly.

KahWinHut 11-1-2009

I went out to the pit in the morning to find it filled with water again. It had not rained the night before, nor at all yesterday. There are no trees overhead and no creek for 300 feet. I was really stumped, but I trudged on, emptied it, lit a huge gasoline fire, lit cedar bedding, pellets, let it all burn down to ashes.

This time I put a slightly burnished olla made from the high fire white Berchers clay, made with Jeri Redcorn's coil method in the oven along with another pot using the same. A large black Caddo clay bowl also went in. A test "pot" and a pot made of clay from the Sabine River Caddo homeland sat on the side and did not go into the oven.

While the pots cooked, I shoveled out all the ashes, mud, etc from the pit and put down 6 fire bricks flat on the bottom of the pit. On top of the bricks I laid down a good bed of charcoals, put on lighter fluid this time, and lit them. The charcoals started good but I noticed it was a slightly windier day then yesterday. The coals died and had to be re-lit. Again I think the damp cold pit was hindering progress. I thought to myself did our ancestors dig pits in the cold after a rain to fire pottery did they have better sense. Probably the latter.

Once the pots were done baking, the coals had died out. I scooped the old coals over to the sides of the bricks and started a new bed of coals. These went up must faster and stayed lit and burned down to grey much faster. I think the pit was dried out a little more. When the coals started turning grey, I scooped them to the sides and put the hot pots down into the middle on the bricks upside down. This again was quite a task. It was HOT. I then laid 3 small hardwood kindling sticks that Arvil Sherril generously gave me down onto the coals. These were twig sized hardwood "splinters" After about 20 minutes these 3 sticks, set on the coals in a "Mercedes" logo shape set ablaze. I did not react fast enough and put more twigs on the flame. So I put 6 more twigs on the fire and put in some dry leaves. These fizzled a little but no big flames. I put more leaves in and some shredded paper. These only smoldered. The leaves burned a little. The twigs did not catch. They were going straight to charcoals instead of flames. I put on more leaves and more leaves and small dry twigs I had gathered around the yard. These only smoldered. I figured I had lost my window of opportunity with the charcoals. They were supposed to be hot enough to catch the hardwood twigs. I perceived the wind and damp pit were conspiring against me. So I went new school on them and threw in 2 fire-starter match blocks. That did it. The leaves caught really well, blackened the paper, which was useless, and started the small twigs. They soon caught the larger hardwood splinters and the fire got going again. I then put in 6 more hardwood kindling and let it catch. This all took about 30- 40 minutes. The fire grew slowly. I then put in 12 splinters. They caught slowly. I then put in a good stack of the kindling pieces Arvil had given me, and they soon caught. I then made a stack on top of that that closed off the top of the pit full of wood. They were stacked in a circular fashion around and then over the pots. It all got going really good and hot much slower than the other fires. I noticed that the flame also got really tall and probably twice as hot and stayed flaming probably twice as long. It took a while for it all to die down but when it did it died down to a very beautiful white ash and coal color, with bright red and yellow embers glowing inside the stack. I let this burn down the rest of the night. I didn't ever hear one ceramic pop.

My wife, Barbie, took the flashlights out with me to look at the pots once the fire died down and cooled. I carefully dug out the pots to discover they were all intact. None had exploded. Only the one small bowl from the Sabine River clay had chipped probably because we did not bake it in the oven at all. However, we ran into an all new problem; One that will probably warrant a rebuild of the pit. The groundwater seeped up into the pit while they were cooling or while they were firing. It saturated the lips and rims of the olla and bowls, turning them into crumbly wet clay. The rest of the pot was fired solid, but the rims and lops were crushed up crumbly wet clay. Sad. The colors were beautiful though. The orange, yellow, browns and slight reds were broken up by the dark black touch spots or grey smoking. The Caddo clay bowl was the most beautiful with clear color distinction lines, reds, and yellows on the black clay. So, we deemed the firing method a complete success, but the firing itself a destructive failure, heh. I wonder if my ancestors had to deal with seeping water tables. My neighbor Ken, a PhD in ecology studying rivers, etc told me that above the water table there is what he called a "beta" layer that carries water underground after a big storm. There was a big rainy storm recently, so I surmised that was the problem. This will limit my firing windows unless I reconstruct a pit above ground. Though not exactly traditional, it will serve as yet another compression analog, as I am growing fond of saying. I did talk to my father though and he had a great idea. I am going to build a ring of bricks and cinder blocks. Pack the same dirt from my pit into it tight, and then dig a pit into it. The clay walls should hold and it will be as if I just took my pit and raised it up 2 or 3 feet above grade. That will still be a traditional pit. I do plan on putting a carport or metal shed roof over the whole pit eventually so that I can keep out the rain and snow, and maybe I could also do raku or barrel firings under the roof. It will definitely need a chimney.

KahWinHut 11-7-2009

OK, this week's firing tests were going to be a bit different. Deciding that an in-ground pit was not going to serve me well in the future because of the water level, I realized that I needed something that could be used more often without having to maintenance it constantly.

I started looking more into how exactly our ancestors would fire their pottery and there was no really clear explanation. One explanation came from an explorer's account where the Caddo would make a fire to get coals, then put the pots in the coals and scoop them up all around the pottery (3.7.0*). This was a very vague description however and left a lot to be questioned, like did they put the pots directly on the coals. This seems very unlikely as it would cause immediate cracking, pop-outs, or explosion due to thermal shock. So if they did do that, I wonder what else they did do to counter the thermal shock. I wonder if it was incredibly thermal shock resistant clay. I wonder if they pre-heated the pots for a very long time by the fire. Lots of details were left out, but I tend to think that maybe it was a combination of the two. I have a feeling the clay was tempered well to prevent thermal stresses and that they would have surely had the insight to "bisque" or otherwise wick out the moisture from the pots by the coal fire. This sometimes causes the pots to steam.

Also I wondered if our ancestors made the fires in any sort of pit or just right there above ground. We do know that they lived in a more wooded area with tall pines trees, and out away from the open plains so there was considerable less wind than where we are now located in the plains of Oklahoma. Wind might not have been such an issue. Also I wonder how we would have dug such deep pits with what can tell were merely shell or buffalo bone hoes and shovels. I figured why dig a pit when an above ground open fire could work? An above ground open firing would work fine if there was no wind. So using this little vague knowledge and common sense, I set out to fire some actual pots with an above-ground "pit."

Now I have read about Maria Martinez and Juan Quezado of the Mata Ortiz. Any self respecting sculpture should read these works. So I have a little insight into doing above ground firings. Their methods were somewhat similar, except that they use cow dung for a long hot even burn.(3.7.1*) What I thought was interesting was that cow dung is not exactly traditional. Natives did not have cows before the arrival of the explorers, so I find it interesting that using cow dung is considered a traditional method. I guess that tests your consideration of what "traditional" really is. Is that from 1600's forward or before contact? That is a really fine line that I don't exactly know how to tread right now. I would like to think creating pots as our ancestors did before contact would be the most traditional, but we made pottery long after contact.  Our methods changed; a great many things changed. I had someone ask me once whether or not it bothered me doing Caddo pottery considering that the women were primarily the ones responsible for creating the wares. I considered that a somewhat naive question. I thought it might be more prudent if he asked me if it bothered me that almost every single thing had changed about our culture since the arrival of the white man. I am doing what I can to contribute to the continuation of our culture in any form as a Caddo, not as a man or a woman.

Again using what I call a "compression" method, I put down a bed of coals. I would use Hickory coals if I could, seeing as how I have pecan trees all around, it would be similar. However the store didn't have any. I piled them up, poured on the lighter fluid and lit them. There is not much difference in doing this than setting a straw and twig bonfire, building it up and letting it burn down to coals. Again, I am compressing the time, not necessarily changing the method. When the coals ashed over, I added 4 twigs as thin as pencils to the fire in the cardinal directions. Hah, not for any particular reason, but maybe to pray this thing would get going. Once they caught, and they finally did after maybe 10, 15 minutes, I added more twigs and kindling to the fire. I didn't add so much to start a raging fire, I wanted to build this up very slowly. I put the pots to be fired right on the rim of cinder blocks I had gathered around the open fire. The wind wasn't gusting, but it was an average Oklahoma breeze. The fire needed some protection. The pots were one Hobby Lobby clay pot and an olla made of fine white low-fire clay from Berchers. Once we had some good coals, I spread them out to make a circle area in the middle of them. I put the pots in the middle and put a flower pot over the top of them. The flower pot had a hole in the top (bottom) that I figured was good for ventilation. I pushed the coals up around the pot and put down for more twigs around it and waited for these to catch fire. They didn't take long, maybe 5 minutes to catch fire so I then started building a bonfire up of wood and kindling around the clay flower pot. My idea of the flower pot was mimicking the Mata Ortiz (3.7.2*). This was their method, but I wanted to see how it worked. They made their fires fast and hot around what they called a quemador (flower pot) using cow dung. I was using hard wood, pecan and oak that was given to me by Arvil Sherril cut into less than 1 inch thick sticks. I built this up really well and over the pot evenly and it went up in flames in a hurry., it was very hot and high in the air maybe 3 foot flames.

It wasn't long before I heard the all too familiar sound of popcorn. The pots sounded like they were going crazy in the quemador. I could tell this was over. These pots had not been properly bisque like the pots last weekend. These were merely warmed by the fire slowly. Or I thought slowly, but  apparently not long enough. I let the fire burn down to coals and removed the extremely fragmented flower pot quemador from the middle. It came apart in pieces and what lay inside were grey and black shards of all the pots. They were obliterated. So I let the coals site a minute before realizing I had time to try again.


Fire mound with Avril's wood. Using thermometer that got sufficiently destroyed. 750 deg. F +


These pots did not make it. Not even the flower pot.

*3.7.0: Butel-Dumont Memoires sUr La Louisana 1753 pp. 271-273 as he describes Louisianna Indians
*3.7.1  Many Faces of the Mata Ortiz 
*3.7.2  Many Faces of the Mata Ortiz

KahWinHut 11-7-2009

After the fire burned down and the coals were ready and very hot, I pulled out 2 more sacrificial pots, as I now called them. This time though I thought I'd try to discover the difference, if any, between this Hobby Lobby clay and my Caddo clay as I called it, that I had dug up and processed into useable hand building clay.  I had one small Caddo clay black pot, and a small highly burnished Hobby Lobby clay pot.
I put them inside the fire ring of cinder blocks and coals just like I had put the previous pots in the middle of the coals. These pots however didn't even get a warming up from being beside the fire.  I put one fragment of the flower pot between the two pots to act as a shield and then covered them with a metal bucket with holes drilled in the top (bottom). I gathered the coals all around the bucket and put down some kindling. The kindling caught very fast, so I started building the wood beehive over the bucket with smaller to larger pieces of hardwood sticks I had laying around the yard. I have tons of twigs and branches all around from all my pecan and oak trees. This built the fire extremely fast and hot. Again, I was going for the Mata Ortiz method to test specific properties, this time it was the clay. Halfway through I heard a pot, then another, then the popcorn came really fast. I was sad that at the possibility of losing the black clay Caddo pot.

When the raging fire had burned down to smoldering coals, I cleared the coals from the bucket, and removed it. It was insane. I was so surprised and excited! On one side of flower pot "shield" there were hundreds of tiny pot shards from the Hobby lobby clay pot that had blown to smithereens. On the other side of the shield there was a pristine, very deep black Caddo clay pot, without a crack or chip. Apparently the clay makes a HUGE difference. This pot had not been warmed nor bisque, and that fire was hot, 2 or 3 feet high, and fast. What a revelation. I had my first real Caddo pot. I knew Sunday I was going to try again.


Using the "Artificial Trees" barrier to block the wind.


Two pot enter, one pot leave. My first Caddo pot made of my black clay.

KahWinHut 11-8-2009

Sunday evening I was out by the bonfire circle and decided to try a long slow 2 hour firing. I wanted to test the effects of heating the pot beside the coals closer and closer as opposed to using a conventional method of putting it in the oven. This meant the coal fire had to burn for at least an hour. And the firing itself should take about an hour or more.

I started the coals with minimal lighter fluid this time. I wanted to build the coal fire slowly. I set one pot I made from the red 5/6 clay I got from the House of Clay in OKC on the cinder blocks around the fire. I cannot remember what they meant by 5/6, was that cone 5 or 6, or was that cone 05 or 06. They said it was good for raku?.which is low fire...ok it's confusing, I will have to ask them later. They said it would stand up well to thermal shock, so that's what I went with. As the fire grew larger, I kept adding my raw hardwood sticks and twigs to the fire to build it gradually and larger. I kept turning and moving my pot closer and closer to the fire and coals. After about an hour, the fire had burned down to ashy coals and the pot was right up against them. It was also very slightly steaming.

I made an open circle in the middle of the coals and set the pot into it to warm some more. After about 5 minutes, I laid up flower pot shards around and over the pot so that it was freely covered by some ceramic material, to keep the burning wood pieces directly off the pot. I imagined the Caddo could have or would have employed this technique to control smoke spots on the pots. I can just picture them using a large broken pot that fell or cracked or maybe some little kid knocked it over. I then put several very small twigs on the coals to get them started. Once they lit I added only a very little more, and more. I kept this up very slowly building a wood mound around the pot and its shards as it caught flames and built slowly in intensity. Finally adding the last pieces of wood to the fire mound was a quite a task, getting close the the roaring flames was not easy.

I never heard one pop, and overall it took about 2 and a half hours until it was slightly dying down in flames. I waited until much later at night when the coals were barely smoldering and removed the pot from the ashes. It had survived and was not marred by smoke anywhere except for where the base sat on the ground. I thought to myself, next time I will need to suspend the pot off the ground with some pointed rocks unless I want the bottom reduced (black). I could have just as easily smothered the smoldering coals with the pile of ash, leaves, dirt and pottery shards I had to turn the whole thing solid black. Maybe next time. I think I am close to perfecting this open-pit firing. I am so excited I cannot wait to try it again, but I am completely out of sacrificial pots, haha. Jeri is coming over to teach me some more this Veteran's day. Time to get to work.


Jeri Redcorn over for Veteren's Day, teaching me how to close the neck.

KahWinHut 11-22-2009

Well, after getting a response from Vince Pitelka about brown colored slips and pit firing, I was more than eager to try to reproduce a "reduced" reduction firing. I had just the pot for the trial as well. It was created from a red 5/6 clay from the House of Clay in Oklahoma City. On this beautiful still sunny day in November I again created an above ground pit (3.10.1*) and started the coals burning slowly. I rotated the pot and moved it closer at 10 minutes intervals for an hour.

Unfortunately I did mess up and this point in my haste because I was excited to try this method. I pushed the pot into the coals onto an open flame on a stick. It popped out on the side where it touched the flames. I didn't slow down at that point either which I should have. I cleared a spot in the middle of the coals, put the pot up on ceramic stilts because I didn't want the bottom to be reduced to black unevenly, and put pine sticks down around the pot. This is another error. I should have shielded the pot at this point with pottery shards. Instead, the fire started building as I put up the broken flower pot pieced unevenly around the pot. Haha, this firing was already a disaster. Going to fast and haphazardly. I then built the small kindling sticks up around this half shielded pot quickly and put on leaves and larger prices of wood and within 10 minutes or less the whole thing was ablaze. Well that is a recipe for disaster as I knew. The pot started popping like popcorn. Oh well. I was sad but I figured I would try to make the most of it. Before the entire pot was reduced to fine shards I smothered the fire with 5 shallow shovel fulls of semi-wet cedar bedding chips, ash, and black gumbo dirt. It started smoking profusely but the fire didn't go entirely out.

After the smoke and fire died down a little, I cleared the material around the shattered pot and pulled it out with a shovel. To my surprise the red clay pot (shards) was now chocolate brown (fig 3.10.1)


Fig. 3.10.1 Chocolate pottery sherd.

The image certainly doesn't do it justice, but it was sufficiently brown to call this firing a success, even though the pot didn't make it through. The chocolate color was definitely a result of the "reduced" reduction in the firing. I used black gumbo dirt mixed with cedar chips and ash, but I do wonder if using pine needles might provide a better result. That will be the next test.


Starting the coals.


Moving the pot toward the coals.


The fire mound.

KahWinHut 4-25-2010

Today's firing was very successful. It was the result of a culmination of ideas, techniques, knowledge, and ingeniuty from a handful of people that have helped me to better understand how pit firing works and how it is more about the actual chemistry of the clay than anything else. I've coem a long way from tryign to slowly build a gradual fire in a pit in the ground using Hobby Lobby clay. Looking back its like looking back onold Jr. high photos...makes ya feel silly. Hey it's ok, I'm learning. So, with the pot I named Hadiku (black in Hanai) I built a medium size mound of charcoals using regular grilling charcoals. I then put small sticks and twigs on the fire not distinguishing between hardwood or softwood, just need some wood charcoal burning. When the charcoals got to the right stage, with red glow underneath and white on top, I took the pot Hadiku that was sitting near the fire for about 40 minutes to an hour and put it into the middle of the charcoals which I had spread out from the center of the mound. I let the pot sit there for 10 or so minutes to absorb more of the temperature and steam the pot more. I was careful not to let a hot coal touch the side of the pot as this would cause a "fly" out or "pop" out, a chip. Then I sat the pot up on as green a logs as I had that were 1 to 2 inches in diameter and built up a "teepee" of twigs and small sticks then larger sticks and then even larger until a foot and a half or longer and only 1 inch diamter sticks were all around the outside of the pot. I worked fast in the heat and smoke as the teepee started to light on its own very quickly and go up in large flames that reached up a few feet. The whole thing was ablaze and burned down to coals within 20 to 30 minutes. It was fast and hot! I actually told the pot "goodbye" thinking it was way to fast and violent. When everything had settled I stired the coals, and using my long stick I pulled the pot out by its neck, and sat it on the grass fully intact with pretty black char marks mixed with the clay body red color. It was beautiful. The hardy homemade clay stood up to the fast and furious pit fire perfectly. The pot "tinged" when I thumped it like it had been fired in the kiln.

KahWinHut 5-17-2010

Sunday I was excited to try firing my pot "Hattie" which was a Raku low fire clay with heavy grog temper. It was formed and then slipped with a thing Redart slip, burnished, then incised with a "Haley" style design .It was unfired. I figured the Raku clay was supposed to be superior in heat shock resistance, so it would hold up quite well to the pit firing. I was dead wrong. I started the charcoals for the fire with the pot sitting on the rim of the charcoals heating up. Once the coals were sufficient, I put the pot in the middle of the coals in a circle area I dug out. I let the pot heat more. Then I balanced the pot on 2 fire bricks and built up the "teepee" of wood sticks. The sticks caught fire and the "teepee" went up in flames quickly. Not very long , like 3 or 4 minutes in the fire, I heard the "popcorn." It was sickening. The pot didn't stop exploding until it was all down to quarter sized pieces. The fire registered 1125° Fahrenheit at its hottest on my laser and probe pyrometer. Very upsetting, I can't think of anythign I did differently except use fire bricks instead of green wood logs. I don't think that Raku clay stood up to the firing.

KahWinHut 6-14-2010

This time I wanted to test 2 things. I had a pre-fired (bisque fired) commercial clay sculpture and a new test pinch pot I had made from soem new clay I discovered across my street in a ravine. It was a yellow-orange type of clay, very plastic. Again, I started my coals, which registered around 680° F on the pyrometer, while the pots warmed by the fire to about 200° F for more than 45 minutes. Then I set the 2 pots directly in the middle of the coals, in a clearing, and let them heat some more. Then I built the wood mound up around the pots and it caught fire fairly quick and went up in flames, to about 1250° F. The fire took about 20-3o minutes. To my surprise both pots came out perfectly. The white commercial clay ceramic had smoke clouds, brown and black all over it, without any cracks, and the small test pot from the new clay source had no cracks and was a deep rust and orange color with a black base where it sat in the coals. So now I have a second clay source, and it doesn't seem to crack. Awesome!

KahWinHut 5-17-2010

I finally put together some clay that I received from John Miller. I mixed it with 60/40% crushed freshwater mussel shell, and formed a bottle with it. It was pretty nice stuff to work with, a littler firmer than the native clay from my land that is untempered (tempered with silt). It was avery light brown color before firing and after burnishing you could see the clam shell showing through though it did take a fairly decent sheen. I was really afraid to do this firing, it was a lot of work to process the clay and crush the shell. I didn't know how it would turn out. The clay was mixed 3/4ths a cup shell and 1-1/2 cup clay. I used the elevated fire brick platform, simply because I didn't feel like moving it. I built the coals up. I do plan on eventually not using store bought coals and creating my own through the use of the unburned leftover wood and kindling, so that it is more traditional. My neighbor suggested in the mean time I could get full hardwood charcoal from the store and then it would at least be all wood firing and no petroleum based commercial charcoal. Good idea! The firing went very smoothly, and pot survived without so much as a smal crack! The pot was heated slowly around the fire for about 20 to 30 minutes, to 600° F according to the pyrometer. Then the charoals were scooped into a ring, and the pot was set in the middle and warmed a little longer. Then a teepee of sticks and twigs and kindling was built up around the pot and it caught on fire by itself and went up in flames quickly! IT got very hot, up to 1310 deg F by the pyrometer. I thougth fore sure the pot would crack or explode. It did neither. It came out beautifully. I then engraved the pot post-firing. Just FYI, incising is carving the pot pre-firing.

KahWinHut 7-24-2010

I just wanted to record that I fired a small homemade clay pot. The clay was quarried from a runoff cut on the other side of the road from my property. It is a very yellow/orange clay with lots of buckshot in it. The buckshot as far as I can identify is small beebees of manganese, and larger marble size pieces of limestone. I also found bone, gold (malleable), and pyrite. I was able to sift this all out and put together a decent clay from it. It was limp but workable clay. I was able to make this pot without any additional temper. I was afraid it might explode or crack in the fire but it did neither without the crushed shell. It came out beautifully. I covered the pot in the fire with large tempered pot sherds and the pot came out completely blackened from carbon. I experimented by then putting the pot in the kiln for 45 minutes on medium ramp. It was oxidized to a beautiful chocolate brown color further convicing me that the Caddo did control the firing very closely rather than just stack up the pots and fuel and letting it burn. Unless of course the carbon in the carbon-trapped pots lost or had the carbon leeched out of the walls while they were interred in the graves.

KahWinHut 9-1-2010

I was invited to fire the pots made from the Caddo Pottery Class that John Miller hosted earlier in the year. It was a pretty simple proceeding. We made a small brush pile and started our coals. We started it using very dry straw and grass with sticks and twigs over the top of that. It caught fairly easy and burned down to coals as we put on more wood. We put all the pots around the fire and warmed them up to tempurature slowly. After about 20 minutes or more, we then cleared a spot in the middle of the coals and put in the greenware pots, unfired and not bisqued, made from the clay in the Washita River (Ke-neh-di- Koo Koo). John did an experiment by laying one pot directly on the pile of coals. While it did not explode or chip, it did crack along its neck seam. We then put the pots in the middle of the spread out coals and start to slowly build up a teepee of sticks and limbs around the pots. The teepee caught fire and the whole pit went up in flames. The flames got pretty high and we recorded the heat of the fire at about 1250 deg F and higher using a laser pyrometer. None of the handmade Washita River clay pots so much as cracked in the fire, and they all turned out really nice looking with shades of brown, and some smudged black. Only the Raku clay piece exploded in the fire, as a demonstrsation that even the "heat shock resistant" commercial clay could not stand up to the intense firing. One of the pots was pulled out while the fire was still extremely hot and pulled to the side. John then put dry straw all over it and it caught fire and turned black from the carbon trapping. He then demonstrated how he would add water to the fine ground red and white primary clays like Kaolin and Redart that he had found around the Arkansas River and brush it onto the pot's engrave lines. After wiping away the excess, it would leave the color in the lines. It was a very nice turnout.








front: My 2 class pots, Back: John Miller's pot with red clay in lines.

KahWinHut 9-1-2010

My brother was able to visit from Atlanta, and so I had everyone over to show them how to do a traditional firing. It was an incredibly hot day, at around 104 deg F, but we set up a shade tent and brought out a hose and a cooler, so that everyone would be able to at least stand the heat a little, haha. I was able to get the fire started quicker than I ever have as I set pine straw on fire and it caught the sticks and twigs extremely fast. I had to keep putting on more twigs just to get some coals that weren't burned down so fast that it wouldn't heat the pots and catch the teepee wood on fire. After about 10 or 15 minutes, which is way faster than normal, I spread a spot in the center of the coals and put the pot I had made from the Red River (Bah-hat-teno) in the middle. I then built up the teepee around the pot using the stick fork method, and put more sticks and limbs up and around the pot. With only a small handful of pine straw the whole thing caught into a large bonfire with flames at least 3 or 4 feet high within seconds. I think the heat had dried all the material so much that everything was going so fast, almost too fast, and it kind of worried me, but it all turned out fine. Once I saw the pot in the middle of the fire was a nice chocolate brown color I pulled it out and let it cool off. I then let Chad and his girlfriend Rhiana know that this was his pot to keep. It was signed from Kawinhut to Nish on the botom. Chad had chosen red, so I went and got some of the red clay from the Arkansas river and painted it into the lines. It turned out great. Pictures of it are in my gallery, titled "Nish."

KahWinHut 11-1-2010

Don't have any pictures, jsut wanted to record I fired this Saturday. First I barrel fired (with some difficulty) an incised plate that I built. I had to go very slow as it is made of commercial clay, using Jeri Redcorn's method. Once I felt like it was sufficiently matured, I was then able to slowly pit fire it with pecan wood and pine needles. Overall I feel like it was successful and I learned a lot about the capabilities of barrel/wood firing over kiln firing.

KahWinHut 11-1-2010

Did some test firings of a new claybody made of clay from the White River , AR, and 10%, 30%, 50% talc. Without temper, none of these clay test pots made it through the true pit firing. The 50% had pop-outs on the bottom burnished side. The 30% had completely random pop-outs. The 10% talc pot completely blew to smithereens. I am starting to think that pueblo clay bodies either are fired completely different than Southeast pit firing, more slowly, or there are other things in the claybody that I am missing, that temper the clay against the violent, fast pit firing. Still trying to figure it out. I also fired a bucketfull of mussel shell.

KahWinHut 11-1-2010

Phile Reimer came over to learn about pottery and firing. I did a pit firing of a clay pot made of Red River clay and talc (50%), and of a pot that had been previously fired in the kiln, to demonstrate the idea of "smoking" and "smudging" and already bisque fired pot. The firing went really well (except I forgot to add a carbon in the can) so the kiln fired pot stayed white, oxidized. The Red River clay pot though had many pop-outs as, like the White River pots, there was no temper in the clay. Again, I feel there is either a more complicated clay body recipe that the pueblos or the Mata Ortiz use when they do violent pit fires, or else they actually don't do violent pit fires, and they simply employ slow burning, slow heat increase type firings.

KahWinHut 11-29-2010

My friends Titian and Stacy Burris came over with their son Radley to visit and we managed to do a firing! I only had one pot made of the orange buckshot clay, that I wanted to test the results of firing without any temper. I did not add any sand or mussel shell. I wanted to try to employ a slower fire this time, but rather than skew too many variables, I kept the firing method the exact same, with the wood teepee, and saw how the untempered pot reacted. It was really nice weather and I think Titian and Stacy really liked watching the process of the pit firing. The pot surprisingly survived the fast pit fire method, but not without cracks. I pulled the pot out of the fire when I determinied it was finished firing, and you can see that the pot is a low red glow, but as Titian suggested, the overly fast cooling of the pot, like I have employed on others in the past,led to quite a few cracks, and even a broken handle in this untempered clay. I did learn however that untempered clay could survive a firing without blowing up, but that the pot would need to be protected quite well during the cooling process to prevent any stress cracking.

KahWinHut 11-29-2010

After red slipping and burnishing a small bottle I had made from the same untempered clay from the last firing, I decided to try and fire it using a more slow and gradual method. After building the coals, I then spread them and put the bottle in the middle. I then built a ring of fire and wood around the pot slowly as the wood caught. Then I built up the ring of wood and fire slowly building up and towards the bottle in the middle. I didnt have the wood and fire touching the pot until it had been good and hot for 40- 50 minutes, and it eventually had the wood and fire built up over the top and enclosed. This was a much mroe slow and deliberate approach to the firing and I am convinced that this would have prevented any cracks in the last firing. The bottle's red slip burnishing came out wonderful, but the bottom of the pot came out unfired, because it sat on the firebrick with nothing underneath it. The pot came out without any explosisons or pop outs, but it was already fractured from me dropping it. The next firing I do I will definitely try and put the pot right into the coals, like in firing #11, but on a shield or brace of some sort, like a green log, rocks, or perhaps already fired potsherds.

KahWinHut 11-29-2010

On Saturday I attended the Choctaw Pottery Expo in Durant, OK, put on by Doctor Ian Thompson. The Expo was to showcase and demonstrate the revitalization of the Choctaw pottery in the tradition of Southeast pottery methods and materials. There was a good number of Choctaw potters there learning and showing their talents. I cannot say enough about Ian Thompson and what he is doing. I wish we had more Caddos that were interested in learning our traditional ways. Ian's pottery was on display and it was very beautiful, and very finely crafted. He then did a a live fire demonstration for everyone and for the Choctaw artists that had their pottery there ready to go! As I was able to be around the fire pit, I saw many things that either affirmed what I had learned in my firings or showed me better ways of doing things. I learned quite a lot about how my methods might be improved, and I also saw some interesting parallels in what I had come to discover just learning on my own. They used large logs rather than small twigs and branches for the initial coal bed, and they also employed a slower firing method stacking up a ring of fire around the pottery. They also put down pottery sherds on the coals so that the bottom of the pots would be insulated against the pot shattering coals, yet let the pots cook on the bottom rather than stay unmature as my last firing had shown me. They had control groups based onthe temper of the pottery, whether it be mussel shell tempered or sand tempered, which can go much higher in temperature. They built the ring up slowly around the pots and eventually covered them and let it all burn down to coals. They made sure they kept the pots covered from the cool wind and let the pots cool off slowly with the charcoals around them. It was a bauetiful day and an amazing demonstration. I was very fortunate to be able to attend and to talk to many different potters about their experiences in their tribes pottery and their experiences in learning about the traditional ways of creating Indian pottery.

KahWinHut 11-3-2011

Well I finally got around to doing a firing this year. It has been a crazy year with our having our little baby daughter and with all the drought and fire bans and all the new festivals and traveling. Anyway, I was finally able to set aside some time for a proper firing. A beautiful day in October, 65 degrees, and no wind. This time I had 3 pots to fire, that were green, meaning no pre-warming nor any pre-firing of any sort: a large bowl, a small bottle, and a medium sized very fine compound bottle. The large bowl was made from some unprocessed Red River clay with only a little sand, the small bottle was made from unprocessed Red River clay with a lot of sand, and the compound bottle was made from processed Red River clay with mussel shell temper. The bowl and small bottle were thick walled, and the compound bottle was very thin walled. I tried a variation on my methods here by building up the fire slower than usual around the pots to build and install heat and drive out moisture even slower than the usual "violent" quick fire I would typically use. The thick walled bowl still decided to blow out its sides. I suspect from what Ian Thompson told me about that particular clay is that it was a "bad batch" so to speak. There must be something in it that is causing it to crack and explode. Again, it was unprocessed, plucked from the ground and built into a pot. The small bottle, coming from a different batch of unprocessed Red River clay, however, did extremely well. It had more sand in it, but it came out ringing like a bell without so much as a scratch. And fortunately, the compound bottle made from processed Red River clay and mussel shell temper came out so very beautifully, perfectly fired to ring like glass, and very very dark chocolate brown. I can't wait to carve the design on it!

KahWinHut 11-20-2011

This pot was a huge undertaking! Haha. It took quite some time, as I had started it before my little daughter was born. It ended up being almost 2 feet tall. Finally after finishing it and burnishing the accents, I figured out a way to pit fire it, traditionally. It took quite some doing. The pot was put inside a trash can filled with pine straw, and slowly the fire was built up around it. The entire pot turned out a beautiful rich chocolate brown with fire clouds in certain spots. you can see the finished product named Tah-nah-hah, meaning "Buffalo", in my gallery here: http://www.caddopottery.com/gallery.php

KahWinHut 11-25-2011

Thought I would get one more firing in for the possible end of the season. It is starting to get cold and wet outside. This pot was made from completely handmade Red River clay with sand temper. I plan on engraving this one after firing. I loved that in the oxidation, non smothered firing environment you can see the pot turn a dark chocolate brown naturally. (See the difference between pics 2 and 3). I smothered it in the end to turn it black then pulled it out of the hot coals so that it oxidized a little back towards brown.

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