Clay Feats and Wood-firing

Clay Feats

  Potters such as Raania Durrani trust the pyrotechnic abilities of wood and, despite the time consuming and labour-intensive process, prefer wood-firing to any other process, writes Rumana Husain

“After every wood-firing I see flames even in my dreams”, says Raania Azam Khan Durrani, the visual artist/ceramist who recently had a solo show of wood-fired pottery and sculptural ceramics (September 9 to 16) at the Canvas Gallery, Karachi.

One of Durrani’s teachers at Bennington College, Vermont, USA — where she studied visual art — had once said to her that if she wanted to learn to fire a kiln, she must fire a wood kiln. “What he forgot to mention was that once you fire wood you don’t want to fire anything else,” she says, without a tinge of regret in her voice.

A day before the opening of her show, after all the work had been put up… she was reliving the creation and firing of each piece. The exhibit, titled ‘Mountains, moonlight and goddesses’ contained ceramics produced this year in Karachi as well as at Aomori, Japan. According to her, she loves to create pots, but she loves it even more to fire them with wood.

This summer, Durrani participated in the Goshogawara International Woodfire Festival in Japan, for which 15 ceramists from 12 countries were selected and invited to work in an Artist-in-Residence programme. These artists, as well as ceramists from Japan exchanged techniques and ideas about ceramic art and the wood-firing process. Durrani is the first ceramist from Pakistan to have been invited to this annual event.

The wood used in the kiln at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture (IVSAA), where Durrani currently teaches ceramics, is mainly keekar, found abundantly around Karachi. Soft woods including scraps, veneers and fruit-crate material are also used. The woods used for firings in Japan include apple and hiba. The firing cycles there range from 2 – 5 days (48 to 60 hours) and the pieces are fired up to 1,250 C and above.

“Our hands are of potters; our flesh is clay,

We are not history; we are the spirit of the living person.”

The above couplet by Durrani, printed on the invitation card, is evidence of her abhorrence for the modern studio ceramist’s art to be associated with the ancient pottery of this land — Moenjodaro, Harappa and Mehergarh. It remains debatable whether it is possible for the ceramists’ work to stay rooted in its respective traditions, yet not be associated with the historical and spiritual context of the pottery of the region.

Durrani’s exciting Kanayama Pottery experience in Japan, of which her “pots are evidence of the long firings, the ash deposits, the thermal shocks, the charcoal inclusions and the constant mental and physical investment in the process” enabled her to understand why potters around the world look towards Japan with respect and admiration: for its long clay continuum, the variety of ceramics and the way pottery is bound firmly with Japanese cultural traditions, for example the tea ceremony.

No one can dispute that nearly everything we know about our ancient ancestors is learned from their clay artefacts. From the Jomon pottery, ca. 10,000 B.C. from Japan to our own region (ca. 3,000 B.C.) where potters’ wheels were set into pits driven by kicked flywheels.

Potters such as Durrani trust the pyrotechnic abilities of wood and, despite the time consuming and labour-intensive process, prefer wood-firing to any other process (other potters use natural gas or electric kilns). The clays used by her are self-composed stoneware, porcelain, Kanayama clay and the world-famous Shigaraki clay. The Shigaraki Valley is replete with high-quality clay deposits — a feat of geology which has made it a sought-after place in the world of ceramics.

At the ‘Mountains, moonlight and goddesses’ show, the numerous pieces on display were all fired at high temperatures, with glazes that are either the result of the clays, the glaze materials, wood-ash deposits or the artist’s control of the firing process. “Wood-fired ceramics are more durable too,” Raania explained. “It is an ancient tradition of aesthetically high value because of the ‘yohan’ factor (the term means literally ‘marked by the flame’). This term opens up a world of possibilities which can happen inside a kiln because of the unusual fire path, and each pot can have its individual organic mark.

In the Korean tradition of wood-firing, which is of major importance to firers around the world, woo- fired pots are considered spiritual and most near to God as they are pots created with the most natural elements: earth, fire, nature (wood), air and human energy.”

The pieces were kept along the gallery walls on long benches, pedestals and shelves. A large number of these were small pots, bowls, ‘glasses’, vases and boxes. There were some slightly larger sculptural pieces, including pots, bowls, two-handled jars and jugs, the largest being a tall vase with a ribbed midriff that probably measured a foot and a half. It had sweeping incisions on its surface where the sitting ash had melted, colouring the vase in an amber-gold hue in some places. However, there were some other pieces that were aesthetically more striking than this piece.

Most of them had no applied glaze — merely decorated with fly-ash and marks from coals. A medium-sized pair of bowls with aquamarine insides, some of the glaze cascading on the outer surface and some leaving spots on the natural ash glaze, was in my opinion, one of her best pieces. Although numbered individually, the two pieces appeared as a pair — almost like a large egg cut into half and displayed side by side.

Four rectangular plates with steely-grey natural-ash-glaze and brown, rusty-orange inscriptions left by organic material, had an appealing colour and texture. According to the ceramist, coal is inserted into the kiln several times during the firing process in such a way that it falls onto the plates or pots, burning directly into them. The few glossy white porcelain pots on show also had these marks as evidence. Porcelain pieces are high-fired vitreous clay bodies containing kaolin, silica and fluxes. Durrani’s pieces were pure white with shades of a peachy colour, giving them a sophisticated look. The rawness of some of the other pieces had a more earthy appeal.

Amongst the sculptural ceramics, there was a group kept on the floor in one corner of the gallery that had a visual link with the outdoors. The organic forms that wore no slips and only a few decorations worked well whereas one or two pieces looked deliberate and overworked, losing spontaneity and flair.

In the words of John Baymore, Durrani’s fellow potter in Japan, “It is a symbiotic relationship... the potter and the forces of nature. In this pattern of working, many pieces are lost so that many others are born with gifts of rare, quiet beauty to be enjoyed by those open to its magical visual effects.”

Perhaps Durrani, the promising young ceramist passionately committed to her art — and craft — will foster a more exploratory approach to her work, while continuing to share her skill with clay as a medium and her deep understanding of wood-firing as a process with her students. Thus a substantial body of work — both long lasting as well as ephemeral — may emerge, to be admired and prized increasingly with time…