THE KILN

a gas reduction firing · one night
you fire the kiln at a small community pottery. nine people share the studio, and firing is everybody's work at once — yours and theirs. you can't see in. you can't undo. and at the end you find out what the fire made of it at the same time as everyone else.
1 · load it
nine named shelves, each with its own heat and atmosphere. where you put a piece decides what it becomes. then you brick up the door.
2 · fire it blind
twelve hours on three knobs — gas, air, damper. no window. you steer by a spyhole, a stack of bending cones, and what the kiln sounds like.
3 · open it
it cools for longer than it fired, and you can't open it hot. then you take them out one at a time and find out what you did.
never fired one before? read how a firing goes first — it is two minutes, and it is the whole game. press ? any time.
a DIRTY BOY DEVS game

before you load

tonight's weather, and what it will do to you. none of it is your fault yet.

the board

take one or take none. you fire either way.

the load

position is chemistry. pick a piece, then pick its shelf.
the damp room
★ the one you're hoping for
click a placed piece to flag it. it comes out last.
the kiln — 9 shelves

the firing

the spyhole
pyrometer
per hour
not started
write down what you think it is doing. nothing will tell you if you are right.
it's cooling

the door is off

what you are looking at

the flagged piece

the unload

the verdict

the shelf

the notebook

how a firing goes

the whole of it, on one page. press ? at any time.