My finished pots are now nearing the bone-dry stage - they've turned a lighter colour and have lost weight a bit. the largest pot still shows evidence of a hairline crack that I suspect will doom it during the firing, but I intend to treat that as just another facet of the experiment.

How to fire the pots

I've not really done anything like this before. In order to properly fire pottery, it's normally necessary to raise it slowly to temperatures in excess of 2,000 Celsuis. This - both the slow rise, and the top temperature - is probably just impossible with an open-pit firing - about the best I can hope for here is some kind of low-fired earthenware. Realistically, I may end up with nothing more than potsherds.

I need to find some way of delivering high temperatures to the clay for a sustained period - I don't intend to build anything like a durable kiln - there has to be a simpler way.

So I think it will be something like this:

• Make a series of square stacking frames from thick timber
• Stack them into a makeshift chimney shape on the ground
• Excavate air vents underneath the edges.
• Loose-fill the space inside with dry wood - starting with small pieces at the bottom, working up to larger chunks at about halfway up.
• Nestle the clay items carefully onto the top of the wood fill and pack loosely around them with small pieces of dry wood
• Light the thing from the bottom

Then what should happen is that the wood inside the chimney burns upwards, growing hotter as it goes, collapsing gently into a heap of very hot, aspirated embers. As long as I don't overdo the drop, or the loading of the wood, the items ought not to be crushed or shattered.

The Kiln