So I have been in Israel for a few days taking part in a pit firing at my great uncles house. He lives on a farm and fires using what he has access to. His work is spectacular and Ill share some when I have another chance to use the Internet.

All in all this was my primary reason for my trip and I have to say that I am happy I came. It was wonderful to see how he fires his work and has inspired me to be more experimental in my work. Its amazing what an experience like this will do to the way you consider your own work. I have done wood firings before but this was completely different.

We began by building up the wood pile around the work yesterday and filling it in with wood chips and dried olive tree leaves. we then used the small dried out branches from an olive tree that was cut down earlier this year. as we loaded the larger wood onto the pile we added all of his paper trash from the past few months as well as the wooden desk that he has had in his studio for the past 60 years.

This morning we woke up and were lighting the fire by 5:45. The fire was massive at first and my cousin Nir spent much of the first hour of the fire spraying the nearby trees with a hose so they wouldn’t catch. I spent most of this time feeding the fire and watching the sun rise over the farm and the fire. Once the fire died down we covered it with some sheets of metal that was left over from the construction of a barn some time ago so we could trap the heat inside the pit. We then spent much of the day feeding wood into the fire every half hour or so and peeling bark from a mulberry tree and pulling the fibers from it to make paper once it dried out. A firing I will not soon forget.