Meet the Soda Fired Fall Collection

Soda firing only happens a few times a year at my studio, and this is my first batch, for fall!

My favorite thing about these pieces is that the outside isn't glazed at all. When the kiln gets hot enough, soda ash is sprayed in. It turns into vapor, moves around with the flame, and wherever it touches the clay it becomes glaze right there on the pot. So the color you're looking at is just the clay and the soda reacting to each other. If you look closely, you can see where the soda traveled past each piece. For this collection I used a brown stoneware, which gives that golden bronze, almost metal look.

Flip one over and you'll notice something else. The bottom is glazed too! Most pottery isn't, because glaze melts into glass in the kiln and the piece would fuse to the shelf. In a soda firing, every piece sits up on wadding, which is little balls of a clay mix. They lift the piece just enough for the soda to travel underneath, and they keep it from sticking to the shelf. You can still see where they sat. Those little circular stamps on the bottom are the shadows the wadding left behind, where the raw clay is showing because the soda never reached it.

The shapes might look familiar. The tumblers and travel cups come from Homecoming, and the bud vases and big vases have Ruffles rims. Same forms, different fire!

I'm planning to do a soda fired collection once or twice a year, and each one will be different depending on the clay and the season. This is the fall bath of 2026. Every piece is one of one, so once they're gone, they're gone!