FORNO

With leftover bricks from the wood kiln construction Cody and I built a Forno--an Italian inspired wood oven for making pizza, stromboli, focacciao and griglia mista. The front is faced with handmade earthenware tiles sporting maiolica painting and glaze decals from Gubbio donated by my friend R.G. Brown. The chimney is thrown and altered earthenware featuring the Re del Forno with a cigar that smokes when the chimney is going.

According to my art history professor friend Tom Pitts the term Fornication comes from the Latin root word Forno. The word Fornix means arch and the bread ovens then were constructed of barrel vaulted arches. Fornicato means done near the archway--as the ladies of the evening in ancient Rome entertained their gentlemen callers near the bakery district and on the cold winter evenings would ply their trade close to the Forno to stay warm.

Nonetheless, the Forno is up and going and hopefully we will be entertaining more genteel ladies while cooking various dishes in the new wood oven.

Pots for Second Firing

Here is a group of bisqueware pots getting ready to be glazed for the second firing of the wood kiln. There are a variety of shapes and sizes -- thrown and hand built that will fit in with a few other pieces that did not get in the first firing. The earthenware piece with the carved slip will go in the very back where the space was cooler than in the rest of the kiln. I will try the approach of placing a lower temperature clay in the back so that I can work with the nature of the kiln instead of having it work against my prejudices of how this kiln should fire. We shall see!