@floriangadsby: These are both some of the most interesting tools potters use, together with some of the dullest, as they’re always on the bottom of my list to put together and I think creating these cone packs might be the first task any apprentice is given in any pottery.   They’re fascinating as they’re essential. They’re called pyrometric cones. They measure heatwork, which is heat measured over time. I place them in the kiln, opposite the spy-holes in the kiln’s door and I watch them at the topmost temperatures. They droop to one side as they hit certain thresholds and it’s how by observing how far they’ve bent over that we can judge what ‘cone’ the kiln has fired to.   The analogy I like to make, which I think explains it to a broader audience is this. When you’re baking a cake, the batter filled tray that’s placed into an oven isn’t immediately cooked, instead, the batter needs prolonged exposure to a specific temperature for it to cook, say 30-45 minutes.   The same is true with clay and glazes. They need to hit a certain temperature range for the clay and glazes to properly mature, and they need to be held at that temperature for a certain amount of time to gain the desired results you’re after and that’s what these cones measure.   I use cones 8, 9 and 10 and I aim to fire until cone 10 is touching toes, (fully bent over). This, probably isn’t the best advice, as really, if you’re firing to cone 10, you should be firing with cones 9, 10 and 11. This way you tell if you’re over firing the kiln too much as the cone above the threshold, you’re after begins to melt and bend over too, indicating you’ve gone too hot. Yet, like many ‘experienced’ potters, you start to just trust your kiln and cones and that isn’t so much of a risk as I’m watching them the entire time they’re bending over. I know of potters who only use one cone in their kiln as they’re firing as they know pretty well that provided they don’t fire them for too much longer after cone 10 has been flattened, it’ll be fine.   Anyhow, that’s cones, dull to assemble but crucial to the process of creating pottery.   #pyrometric #cones #pottery #process #craft

Florian Gadsby

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Saturday 02 May 2026 14:49:03 GMT