The kiln is on its last burner
Our big gas kiln was installed in 2000. It has fired, at a rough count, more than four thousand loads. Last month the second of its three burners failed, and the engineer was honest with us about the third.
A kiln of this size is not a thing you repair indefinitely. The shell is sound, but the burner assembly is long out of production and the parts we have been nursing it along with came off another kiln that was being scrapped. We have reached the end of that road.
So we are raising for a replacement. The figure is $40,000, which buys a kiln of the same capacity, installed, with a burner system that is still supported.
What happens if we don't
The ceramics studio stops. Not immediately — we can keep firing smaller loads in the electric kilns — but the wheel classes, the open studio evenings and every bursary place in ceramics depend on being able to fire what gets made. Thirty-one pieces went into the current exhibition. None of them would exist.
We are about two thirds of the way there, mostly in gifts under $100. If you have ever taken a pot home from this building, that kiln fired it.