Why We Fire Twice
Every SYLLAGE piece is fired twice. The first firing is invisible in the final object, but nothing works without it.
Conclusion
There's no version of this process that's faster and still trustworthy. We checked, more than once.
Author
SYLLAGE Studio
Reading Time
2 min read
Category
Craft
The Firing Nobody Sees
Most people never see a bisque piece. It’s the stage before glazing, when the clay has been fired once at a lower temperature, hard enough to handle but still porous enough to absorb glaze. It has no shine, no color. It looks unfinished because it is.
We fire twice because there’s no reliable way around it. A single firing forces a choice between strength and control, and we’ve never been willing to give up either. The bisque firing lets us test a piece properly before committing it to glaze: check the walls for hairline cracks, sand any rough seams, confirm the base sits flat. Mistakes caught here are cheap. Mistakes caught after the glaze firing are not.
What One Bad Batch Taught Us
Last winter a full shelf came out of the bisque kiln with a fault none of us could see until we ran a finger along the inside rim of each piece. A hairline crack, invisible to the eye, present in about a third of the batch. Every one of those pieces got set aside. None of them made it to glaze. It cost us a week of work. It also confirmed why we check at this stage and not later.
No Second Chances
The second firing is where the piece becomes what you’ll actually hold. Glaze goes on by hand, in thin, even passes, then the kiln takes it past 1,200 degrees Celsius. This is the firing with no second chances. What comes out is final, cracks and all, so by then there shouldn’t be any left to find.
Two firings, one for structure and one for surface, is slower and less forgiving than it needs to be.
