My Pottery Debut with First-Ever Shichirin Ceramics

I’ve always seen pizza ovens, pottery, and well-digging as the three great dreams of a log-house life. Most people would probably start with a pizza oven, but I’d been curious for a long time about the world of pottery fired in a charcoal brazier, so I decided to peek into it first. There are lots of videos on YouTube explaining different techniques, but after watching many of them I eventually reached a simple conclusion: “For now, just try firing it.” Professionals have to think about costs and efficiency and make sure their work turns a profit — but that’s where an amateur has a special advantage: time, and the freedom to waste it.

Ordinarily, pottery is fired in a kiln over many days. With brazier firing, everything is finished in a single afternoon. The method is simple. Place charcoal in a shichirin brazier, use a hair dryer to blow air and raise the temperature, and once the clay pieces are thoroughly dried, heat them slowly, little by little. When they finally turn glowing red, you keep them there for a few minutes to a few tens of minutes, then take them out. If beautiful little sake cups or plates can be made this way, it would be wonderful.

I already had a brick barbecue hearth, so I used that area for the pre-heating stage, letting the pieces warm up gradually. Once they were ready, I transferred them one by one into the brazier.

This is how I arranged them. Smoke passed right across the pieces, and I worried it might be bad for the surface, but when everything was finished, it turned out not to be a problem at all.

As for the firing bed, I tried placing the pieces on top of perlite, but that choice didn’t work very well — the glaze fused to it and stuck. Next time I’ll rethink the setup: maybe ash, or nothing underneath at all… plenty more experiments ahead.