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In August of 2009 I was commisioned to build an anagama for Tainan National University of Arts in Tainan province of Taiwan.  

Ching-Yuan Chang the senior ceramics professor has been building a world class department.  He regularly brings his students to NCECA and arranges for them to study abroad for part of their degree program.

Ching-Yuan also has created a fabulous visiting artist program, allowing for a constant flow of new ideas and interpretations to enhancing the graduate studio.

I designed the kiln on Google Sketchup with a long climbing flue to allow for a lot of passive control of draft.

I also designed the pad for the kiln pad which preceded my arrival in Taiwan.

Here is where the kiln is exactly in the world.

The walls were built with red brick, the interior spaces were filled with clayish dirt, and then covered in a thin coat of concrete.

I was, and still am a bit concerned how this will hold up under heat and all the weight of the kiln.

Fortunately frost heaves are not a big concern in Taiwan, although drainage is during typhoon season.

We had some trouble finding silica sand.  The cheep and readily available sand is this beautiful black river sand.  We fired some to cone 10 in an electric test kiln and found that it fused together in a brown lump.  

Much of building a kiln in a foreign country is testing materials.  We spent a lot of time locating fire clay and silica sand, 2 key ingredients in a kiln.

Here we are lining the fire pit with fire brick.  In the photo is Jonatha Nibbe, a graduate student at Tainan National University originally from Minnesota.

I designed the kiln to have a fire pit in the front that came up under the fire box.  This allows for a fire to be started outside of the kiln.  Later during the firing the pit can be covered with shelves.  The shelves can be gapped to adjust the air under the coals.  Essentially this will be a non clogging source of air under the firebox.

You can see the walls coming up here.  We used the black sand under the bricks to level the floor.  The pad was beautiful in it's crude construction, but not very level or to specs.  But hey that's what sand is for.

We vaulted the floors with a layer of 3400 degree bricks on the bottom, broken bricks on thier sides with silica sand in the gaps filling the center, and a layer of 3600 degree bricks on the top.  We used the 3600 bricks on any surface that came in contact with the flame.

You can also see we built a mock door to keep the opening evenly spaced and square.  We spent a lot of time on the door making sure it would brick up easily later.

Each day we would add a step, leveling the floor took the most time.  You can see we built the arch for for the horizontal flue while still building the walls.

All the wall bricks were dipped in a kaolin wash to help them lay up tightly.  I would have used fire clay had it been an option.

These are the finished vertical walls of the anagma.  We did not finish the floors as we did not have silica sand to fill the gaps of the vaulted floors. From this point on all the walls will be arched.  

The next step here is build the floor under the long vertical flue in the design.

We placed the arch for the flue before we had finished the pad.  We needed to line up the front arch forms so we could continue working.  Once we had the line we removed the back wooden arch form and finished laying and leveling the brick floor.  

We had enough people working at this point we were able to generaly take on two tasks at a time.  I admit that leveling and drylaying floors and even curved walls loses its charm pretty quickly.  Once the arches start going it becomes exciting again.

Here is Yao Chang starting to lay the arch brick on the 8 foot flue.  We had 2 people working on each side, and one person cutting brick.  A straight arch form like this was very good practice for the intricate work of the compound arch form to come.  

In the back ground you can see three people discussing the next arch form rib to cut.  It is graduate school so these things need to be discussed.

Here you can see the hard brick layed over the arch of the long horizontal flue.  In the original plans the flue was going to climb with the hill, but since the pitch of the hill was not steep enough we just made the flue level and added a taller chimney.

This long straight area will be an interesting part of the kiln with which to experiment.  They can load pots throughout this area and use the side holes as charcoal dumps.  They can leave this are empty and use the side ports as passive damper control, or blow holes to read pressure.  They can build load the flue with cone 8 pots and build an accordian bag wall between the main anagama and the flue, essentially parsing the kiln into two chambers.

Looking at the side view here is a great cut a way view of the kiln.  You can see where the main arch comes down into the flue.  You can see how the flue will tuck under the main arch. 

The ribs of the arch form are apparent, as is the lathe on the far side. The ribs are placed at about 1.5 feet from eachother.

This is the other side of the previous view.  I really love the comparison and similarity of the two materials.  The lines of the brick meeting the curved wood is such a pleasing sight.  I do love me some arches, straight and curved.

We dropped the arch form out of the flue and started laying brick on the main anagama arch.  You can see our efforts to consider flame path and eliminate seams.   

The main compound arch spans over the beginning of the flue, essentially corbeling down and compressing on top of the smaller arch.   The chimney also wraps around the flue resting on top of the arch. This eliminates the seam between the two.  I feel this is the tightest and most lasting solution.  

The students (specifically Lung Cheh and Yao Chang) did a superior job cutting the bricks to span over the arch of the flue.  The chimney is straight, plum, level and tight.   

I was very impressed with the amazing craftsmanship of all the Tainan art students.  On task they were meticulous, and the kiln benefited from it.

As a side note the strange object at the bottom of the chimney is an anti mosquito incense burner.

Here are Lung Cheh and Yao Chung working on the chimney.  When all was said and done the chimney is about 14 feet tall.   The kiln steps up another 3 feet over the length.  A nice displacing draft can be felt even with the door open on the kiln, and the incense burner I mentioned in the last photo burned really well at the bottom of this chimney.

Here are some nice square brick wrapping around a form that curves in all three dimensions.  Good brick laying is very pleasing to the eye.

We built the kiln with 4.5 inch layer of super high duty brick on all fire faces.   This should reflect back a lot of heat into the kiln and help it cool slowly.  The hard brick is also very resistant to the corrosive ash of the firing.

Once we finished the hard brick we coated the whole kiln in a 2.5 inch layer of softbrick for its tremendous insulating abilities.   This layer is non structural but it saves the kiln on energy.   

The kiln itself is a mass of brick, fill that with posts and shelves, not to mention pottery and sculpture and you have a huge heat sink.  The Soft brick will help make better use of the BTUs.

You can also see the marble slabs we used to buttress the arch around the kiln.  The use of marble raised the quality of the equation and we all worked hard to make the kiln as lovely and as classy as the buttressing.

We then began to mix the skin coat that covers the whole anagama.  We used a mixture of sand, cement, rice hulls and clay.  I would have added fireplace ash to this mix if I had any.

This top loading cement mixer was great.  It had a sluice gate on the bottom that dumped the whole load into a waiting bucket.  You can see the orange bucket being caried back to the mixer for another load.  We  tried to work quickly spreading the mix on both sides of the kiln about 2 inches deep.

 We worked fast but it got late.  We used any extra mix to grout between the marble slabs that buttressed the sides of the anagama.  The whole kiln looked like a wet whale, large and dormant.  

Then we stacked the door and cut the arched shaped bricks.  Since I was not going to be in Taiwan for the first firing of the kiln I wanted to leave them with a door configuration similar to the one I use.   We also built an upside down sling in which to store the door bricks between firings. 

This system keeps all the door bricks together, and in the correct order.

You can see that the door is made of a combination of hard and soft bricks.  I use hardbricks anywhere there will be wood, coals or other brick sliding in or out.  I use soft brick everywhere else to make  the door cooler and more pleasant to work around.

The president of Tainan National University of Arts came and lit a ceremonial fire in the kiln to bless it.  

The President is a highly accomplished concert violinist.  He was quite taken with the project and the kiln and spoke about coming back during the first firing to play some music.   I am sorry I am going to miss that.

• Bede Clarke USA
• Sandy Lockwood, AUS
• Joy Brown, USA
• Robert Sanderson, IRE
• Shinsei Wada, JAP
• Katsuyuki Sakazume, JAP
• Park Chul Chan, KOR
• Ching-Yuan Chen, Taiwan
• Po-Ching Fang, Taiwan

Here are the folks who were primarily responsible for building the kiln.  The graduate students of the university, as well as the forklift opperator, and of course Lindsey Heiden on the far right.  

Lindsey came with me to Taiwan for the kiln building experience and she was invaluable. She worked hard everyday and always had a positive attitude, two priceless attributes.

And finally this is me leaving Taiwan on November 27th 2009.  Next time I will have to make it to those mountains and beyond.
I will probably have to rent a more powerful scooter though.

Here is where the kiln is exactly in the world.