Joanie

Matt and Pootsie are right, low fire clays aren't going to work well. Anything you fire in a pit isn't going to work except for perhaps accent pots or very small pots, protected from frost. Eventually the water will penetrate the inner clay surface and cause cracking and crazing.

The reason is, that low fire pottery is porous. It will always be porous, no matter what you do. Now, you could glaze it inside and out, and perhaps make it work for a while, but how would you stilt it in a pitfire (keep the melting glaze from touching any surface)? Low fire pottery has to come to somewhere close to 2000 degrees F in order to be "mature".

High fire clay, on the other hand, is not porous if fired correctly. It has crystals that grow and fill the areas between the clay platelets. So water can't go through it. Even without glaze, the high fire clay won't allow water to get into the pores very far. High fire clay goes considerably above the 2000 deg. mark. Not only temperature is important, either... it takes a combination of temperature and time to mature the clay.

Pit firing is fun, and many potters do it. It is used for non-functional ware mostly... dry jars, things like that. They often use a "saggar" which is a fireproof box to put the ware in, so that it heats up but doesn't get contaminated by the burning material. It takes a lot of material to get a hot fire even for low fire ware, I'm not sure a pit the size you describe would do it anyway without help. (like some sort of draft, or something special to burn instead of pallet wood etc.)

There are places that will fire for you, for a very small fee. Most of them do low fire, but you should be able to find someone who will fire high. Go to your local ceramic supplier (not a glaze and paint place) and put up a little ad or ask around. Most ceramists are looking to fill their kilns, because the more ware the better. Just make sure you have the right kind of clay, and don't leave any air pockets or your little pot will explode all over their stuff and they will be really upset.

Lessons are the best way to learn. It's dirt, so to speak, and primitive man was able to make vessels from it. But these days we expect a little more out of our dirt, and we have more choices.

Good luck!
Joanie

__________________