Firing a Bottle Oven

HOW TO FIRE A POTTER'S BOTTLE OVEN 

This was the basic firing process for a biscuit or glost, updraught or downdraught, potter's bottle oven:

• The bottle oven's firing chamber was filled (placed, or set) with pottery which had been placed for protection in saggars. 
• The entrance doorway to the firing chamber, called the wicket, was built up and sealed, forming the clammins.
• The temperature inside the firing chamber was raised to over 1000C to fire the pottery. Coal or oil was used as the fuel. 
• After the peak firing conditions of temperature and 'soak' had been achieved, the oven was allowed to cool. 
• The clammins was broken down and the fired pottery taken out (drawn from the oven).
• The whole process would then start over again.

The process of firing an oven was extremely inefficient. It was wasteful of fuel and other resources. It was also laborious, and a serious danger to health.

The single most important part the potting process is the biscuit firing.  It is here that the pottery body mixed by the potter, according to a recipe, undergoes its greatest test - the ability to withstand fire and to emerge from it the form of sound, useful, practical or beautiful, saleable products.

The biscuit ovens timetable
Photo: from a display at Gladstone Pottery Museum

FIRING GLADSTONE'S OVENS

Publicly available text by Alison Nicholls, Heritage Manager (Curator), Gladstone Pottery Museum, 2019-2022

There's lots more about firing bottle ovens here> on The Potteries Bottle Oven site.