My parents were militantly against smoking, and one of the most stressful times in our family was after I reported to them my discovery of my older, teen brother's stash of smoking supplies in a thicket in the back field.
Although I never smoked myself, I breathed in vast quantities of second hand smoke as a waitress in NYC before its restaurant smoking ban. I am currently wondering how my non-smoking daughter will deal with roommates or friends smoking at college should that be an issue during her freshman year. Now, having lived away from city air for a couple of decades, I am full of gratitude for the air that smells of honeysuckle or freshly rained on earth. The less one is exposed to smoke, the less tolerance one has for it. Hence my current
intolerance for smoke even in forms like incense. We changed our wood-burning fireplace to gas because the little bit of smoke it produced aggravated my otherwise mild asthma. Nothing thrills me now like sweet, clean air.
None of this was on my mind when a ceramist colleague invited a bunch of us over to her rural house to do a "smoke firing" last Monday. I've seen the beautiful, delicate, atmospheric patterns that smoke firings can leave on ceramic pots, and was eager to see how it was done.
A pit for the firing was already in place: a 2 ft. X 4 ft. X maybe 2 ft. deep, dug out dirt hole lined with piled up bricks. We each draped our previously bisque-fired (low-kiln-fired) but unglazed ceramic works in banana peels, copper wire, bamboo leaves, or whatever we could think of that might leave some organic deposit of hue or pattern on the white clay. Then we wrapped each collage in newspaper and set it on a bed of sawdust that had been sprinkled into the bottom of the pit.
All the pieces were "loaded" into the pit, and completely buried in sawdust. Then we laid metal grates across the top of the pit. It was damp that evening, so the newspaper torches didn't want to light. It took quite a few starter nuggets planted into the sawdust to finally catch fire.
Once it looked like the fire would continue, we placed ceramic tiles over grates to make a roof, so the pit would only smoulder, and not blaze. Then we went in to have dinner.
About 45 minutes later we went out to check on our smoking pit, and sure enough, a good stream of smoke was rising up into the treetops, and no flames were leaping out. All looked as it should. However, I had to keep away from the direction of the breezes, because I then realized that, "DUH, a smoke firing was going to make smoke that I wouldn't like to breathe"! As exciting as this was, I wasn't ever going to want to do it myself, since that would entail being in the midst of the smoke at least when getting the pit started.
In a couple of days we will all get our smoke-fired pieces back from the pit, and everyone is looking forward to seeing what happened in there. Did any of the organic matter affect the results? I only had one tile to contribute, but am really curious about how it will look.
I am glad I wasn't the one doing the most attempted lightings, and I hope the benefits of the smoking will be worth it to whoever breathed in the most smoke during the process.
I was rather disappointed in the results. The smoke color did not play up the textures on the clay or in any way enhance the forms. Everything looked pretty much just dirty. Previously, I had painted some high fired tiles with watercolor, and the watercolor sank nicely into the recesses and rolled off the relief surfaces, enhancing what I had built. This was not the way the smoke acted. It indiscriminately singed across the piece in a muddy wash. Truly, I did not spend a long time making my tile. I had to get something done in time to be ready for the smoke fire, and it's probably not my best work. I had hoped for a more dramatic effect, however. 
