Our fascination for flames and the dawn of man
When firing pottery in an electric kiln makes the potter’s life so easy, why continue to fire with wood?
Though I could describe everything beneficial about wood firing, I must admit it’s a lot about fascination.
Wood-fire just fascinates me!
I do like flames, it’s really so simple. Not in a destructive way. But for peace of mind, just watching flames for its therapeutic effect, its meditative here-and-now experience.
You know humans & flames are deeply connected, and we just seem to have forgotten all about it:
Pre-history and the dawn of man.
When the camp is done for the night, while darkness sneaks into every corner of the forest, the soft flames give light, heat, and protection; against the dark and whatever wild animals are out there. Heat means cooked food, hot chocolate, and a cozy evening. But there is also something on a much deeper level; if you sit by the fire, observing the flames closely at night in a quiet forest, you can sometimes get a glimpse of…….. your ancestors.
Spiritually at least! As a personal mind game, yes you can.
According to Wikipedia, the Homo race got an intimate relation to flames for maybe as much as 2 million years:
Claims for the earliest definitive evidence of control of fire by a member of Homo range from 1.7 to 2.0 million years ago
That’s insane!
2 million years ago we were maybe sitting around the campfire at night watching the flames, just like you and me today. Homo Sapiens as we know us weren’t even born. We talk about the grandparents of the human race. Meaning Homo Sapiens was bred and born in the ash of our ancestor’s campfire. Literary, we developed here, this is home, evolutionary speaking.
Some scientists even claim we owe our high intelligence to cooking food on the campfire. 25% of your total energy intake goes to support your massive brain, energyvise a big brain comes at a high price. To cook and heat food was a short-cut to large amounts of nutrients, and the path to our over-sized brains.
If you split the modern human’s existence into 100 equal parts, we have lived 99 of them in the Stone Age. That’s an idea to play with, huh? ChatGPT, electricity, cars, summer vacation, paper money, or the old steam engine. It’s all just a flash, a costume party.
See the connection here? Modern life is so not you, and the campfire is a mental WiFi, just waiting for you to hook up again. Humans are entertained by flames today, as other humanoids probably were 2’000’000 years ago: The atmosphere around the crackling campfire, surrounded by the dark night all around, and the sparse light from the cosmos above.
Well; I won’t say the campfire is the missing piece in your soul, and the solution to every problem. But personally; I feel deeply bound to it, this is home for me, and the place to reflect over life in the big picture.
Humans greatest invention
Fire is one of the human’s greatest inventions, the greatest! We are the only animals controlling fire. Inventing the wheel? Blah. The scarab-beetle rolling his ball of dung invented it too. Only humans had the curiosity and guts to tame the power of destruction. In historic times somewhere on earth; a bolt of lightning started a fire, and someone in a small group of frightened people nearby must have said; “I just want it!”.
I think that pretty much defines us as a species.
Wild flames – Free flames – Tamed flames
So what does it all have to do with pottery?
The wood-fired kiln IS the campfire, it’s an upgrade, a campfire 2.0 so to speak. It’s the roots of Homo Sapience and one of the oldest crafts on earth. The flame-kiln literary evolved out of our campfires, and represents 30’000 years of ceramic improvements!
Fire’s dual nature.
Fire is man’s strongest symbol of destruction, every animal fears fire, not without it’s reason have to say. Both the campfire and the wood-fired kiln are all about taming the beast, controlling the inferno. Not that it wants to be controlled though.
Horses did not invite humans to ride them, every wild horse fought for its freedom and lost, Homo Sapiens slaved them, we forced them. Like you have to force the flames to do as you please, it demands mastery to transform a burning stick into the volcano in our pottery kiln, and now one can’t truly master something they don’t fully understand. Fire is unpredictable in its nature. Deep inside your cozy campfire exists a wild horse dreaming about its freedom. That is why potters have always seen the kiln as both a friend and an enemy. I read ones that the old Asian Snake-kiln has word for being so difficult to master, that every firing is a fight, a hard fight was the key to good pottery. If everything goes too easy, you must be doing something wrong.
I realize my love of flames is just half the fascination. The challenge of controlling them is the other half. The craft of reading flames, understanding the process deep inside the kiln, and adjusting the fire to get the results I want. I like the fact that it demands long experience and know-how to handle it well, and a lifetime to truly master.
Wood-fired pottery is both bushcraft and sustainable living;
Humans have a too high environmental impact on the planet. Potters contribute to this as everyone else. I do like the ecological benefit of short-traveled materials. Fire it with local wood is how it’s “meant to be”, trees are made for burning.
If society breaks down today I need some dead trees, local clay, and a matchstick – to make pottery. I don’t really need a matchstick either; I can make fire with some sticks, friction heat, and a shoelace, but that’s another story.
Or maybe it’s the same story?
Wood-fired pottery is basic survival skills, taught from one generation to the next since pre-historical times. We need to keep the tradition alive and teach it to our kids.
“Our fascination for flames and the dawn of man” October 2024