ANAGAMA FIRING: DAY THREE

after firing during daytime on sunday i went back at 10.30pm to pottery to help the night team. adil was still not feeling well and i wanted to experience how it feels to be firing the anagama during night.
it was worth it. am so happy i behaved like a enthu cutlet and went for it!
the light at the chimney and the glow which spread around the pottery was amazing.
the whole night we fed so much wood to the kiln, in order to build up the ash (and also to get the cone ten and firebox two, down.
lola slept next to me throughout, i felt quite energetic and didnt feel sleepy at all.
by the time the morning team reached we had achieved a lot of ash pile on all the chnmbers but still the cone ten wasnt down.

DAY THREE: MORNING
i wanted to come back for my morning shift although everyone thought it was a foolish idea! i went back home, had a good shower, slept for two hours had coffee and then got back to the studio. and am so glad i decided that, because we finished the firing a day early and monday happened to be the last day of firing.
there was enough ash build up. we had the desired temperature. and the two stacks in the front chamber looked a bit dizy, we thought any further increase in temp might make the shelves collapse. so at three pm ray asked everyone's opinion. and we decided to finish the firing a day early. we called antra and neha and informed them
we decided to salt the last chmaber, adil made all the preparation. we took half kilo of salt made a pouch of it inside a newspaper. we took turns for spraying the salt, as soon the salt was sprayed salt packets were dropped through the stoke hole. it was a beautiful experience spraying the salt. one could actually see the glow on the pots. it was as if i was high on marijuana and hallucinating! am putting a picture of my pot, inside the kiln, taken by antra.
we finished by nine at night, nearly 75 hours firing.
then close all the openings and mud up the front and side doors.
we were home by ten thirty and i slept the whole day!
we open on thursday. keeping the fingers crossed..