Smoked and Fired and DONE

Well, here it is:

It isn't that I thought it wouldn't work, it's just that I didn't think it would work so well on the first try.  Granted, my plan evolved as I worked, but I feel confident that I can troubleshoot and reproduce this process again.

You can fire anything you want to a middle cone without a true kiln if you are very careful with your temperatures and moisture.  You want your 'fire' to mimic a kiln.  Things need to slowly heat up, hold a temperature, and then slowly cool down.  AND EVERYTHING MUST BE  BONE DRY BEFORE FIRING.  I had my greenware in a foil bundle and that bundle was placed directly on top of smoldering coals.  Honestly, I think that the foil/detritus bundle that surrounded the vase was enough insulation to allow for a gradual heat up/cool down.  If I didn't want the the vase to be colored by the smoke and burning material, I would just need to make sure that no oxygen would get into the bundle (no oxygen, no combustion... plus no airflow implies that no smoke from the outside will get in).  Once the ceramic has become as hot as the coals, which it should heat up to within an hour, you can put burning material directly on it.  That is basically what I did; at several points after the vase had been heated, I burnt things directly on the surface.

When you have achieved the desired coloring or temperature, put the lid on you kettle to suffocate any remaining combustion, and once everything is suffocated, open up the lid to allow for faster cooling (otherwise it will take days to fully cool down).

This smoke firing technically was a combination of oxidation and reduction firing (if the lid was on or off) and, depending on how traditional you are with you definitions, this was a modified raku process.  I will certainly do more of these home firings and I think there will be a few more posts to explain the different types of firing (oxidation, reduction, raku, etc.)

I should also mention that you will reek of smoke after this.  And since I was doing this in the vessel that I cook food in, the vase smells a bit like steak.  I think you should pay extra for that...

To finish off the vase, I added a bit of gold leaf and buffed on some micro-crystalline wax.

This is the wax that I was using.  I use this particular one for just about anything as it is archival and removable.  You can get it from a few sources but I order it from Talas:
http://apps.webcreate.com/ecom/catalog/product_specific.cfm?ClientID=15&ProductID=17865