Chris Kelsey Ceramics

Chris Kelsey is a ceramic artist living in Spokane, Washington. Initially attracted to clay for it's sculptural and textural possibilities, he also employs those aspects in his functional pottery forms. Images of some of his work are in this site.

New insulating skin coat on all but the sutemma and chimney base.

The outside of this little arch is catanary, 22.5x22.5"

The baffle chamber is 22x27". flat top cover of 24" bricks.

A big Thank You to Justin Lambert for discussing the baffle chamber with me. This one is not even half the size of his kiln's, but I'm optimistic it will produce better firings.

Laying out the curved walls.

Vertical walls are 4 bricks high, will need to buttress higher than that.

The "mortar" is liquid fireclay with 70 mesh silica sand. Each brick is dipped before placement.

Placing wedges under the arch former ribs. I was a bit worried that they weren't a steep enough angle. But it worked out.

time to put the lathe on.

Steve the carpenter helping with the lath. Thanks Steve!

final layer of 9" walls, from here up will be single layer hardbrick, soft brick, and skin.

Testing the arch. This is not the final configuration. I studied Simon Levin's kilns to design the front of the arch using castable.

Half brick gaps and others will be filled with castable cement to hold it all together.

I had a lot of small wedges from cutting bricks, and used every one of them on the arch.

The back was a challenging puzzle.

Dropping the form and dismantling it.

First look at the interior.

Had leftover arch bricks, might as well make some flying buttresses.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41