How the Pottery is Made
Every vase, bowl, pot, wall hanging, tile, or lidded form at Smoking Turtle Studio begins the same way. Les either throws it on the wheel, shaping the clay by hand while it spins, or builds it entirely by hand without a wheel, forming each one individually before it dries.
Once it reaches a bone-dry state, meaning all moisture has left the clay, it's sanded to a smooth, even surface, removing tool marks and imperfections. Next comes burnishing, a traditional technique where a coat of terra sigillata, a fine liquid clay slip, is worked into the surface with a fine sponge or smooth stone until the clay particles compress and take on a soft, natural sheen. No glaze touches this work. What you're seeing is polished clay, not a coating.
After burnishing, each piece goes into an electric kiln for a low bisque fire. This step preserves the burnished surface Les just spent hours creating, locking it in before the piece moves on to firing.
This making process is consistent across every form Les creates, which means the burnished surface is always ready to take on whatever firing technique comes next, whether that's horse hair, saggar, or pit firing. That consistency in the making is exactly what makes the variation in the firing possible.
How the Horse Hair Firing Works
Horse hair firing, also known as horsehair pottery or horse hair raku, is a smoke-firing technique where strands of horse hair are laid onto a vase, bowl, pot, or other form straight out of the kiln while it's still glowing hot. The hair singes instantly on contact, leaving fine, dark, smoke-trail markings on the surface, an effect that can only be achieved this way.
At Smoking Turtle Studio, Les fires his work using an outdoor kiln he built from a trashcan lined with ceramic fiber and powered by gas, using a weed burner to bring each one up to temperature. Once it reaches roughly 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit, he removes it from the kiln while it's still glowing hot.
At that heat, strands of horse hair from a horse's tail or mane are laid directly onto the burnished surface. The hair singes instantly on contact, leaving a fine, dark trail burned into the clay exactly where each strand touched. The result is a pattern of delicate, smoke-black lines unique to that vase, bowl, or pot, since no two placements of hair burn the same way twice.
Because the surface was already burnished and low-fired in the earlier bisque stage, it holds the marking cleanly, without absorbing or blurring the carbon trail the way an unburnished surface would. Every horse hair fired item from Smoking Turtle carries its own permanent, one-of-a-kind pattern, making each one a genuine collector's item.
This technique is widely credited to Michael Morier, who taught on a Navajo reservation in Sanders, Arizona, where he also learned traditional burnishing. Building on that foundation, Morier is recognized by many in the pottery world as the originator of burning horse hair onto hot, burnished pottery. His work went on to be featured in more than 50 galleries across the United States and overseas before his death in 2008. Les carries that tradition forward at Smoking Turtle Studio, giving each vase, bowl, pot, and wall hanging its own unrepeatable character.
How the Saggar Firing Works
Saggar firing is a smoke-firing technique where a vase, bowl, pot, or other form is sealed away from open flame, either inside a container or wrapped tightly in foil, so that materials placed against its surface react with heat and smoke to create one-of-a-kind coloring and markings. No two saggar-fired pieces of work ever turn out the same.
At Smoking Turtle Studio, Les' approach to saggar firing varies from vase to vase, bowl to bowl, and pot to pot. Sometimes the work goes into a metal container, similar to a popcorn tin or a small trashcan, and sometimes into a ceramic or clay saggar. Most often, he applies materials directly to the burnished surface and wraps it tightly in heavy-weight aluminum foil, sealed the way you'd wrap a baked potato.
Before wrapping, Les applies a combination of materials that react with heat and smoke to color and mark the surface. This includes chemicals like ferric chloride, copper carbonate, and iron oxide, along with combustibles, natural elements such as ferns and leaves, pulled-apart copper scrub pads, and even products like Miracle-Gro. Each material reacts differently against the burnished clay, producing its own colors, blushes, and patterns.
The wrapped or contained vase, bowl, pot, or other form is then fired in the same outdoor gas kiln Les uses for horse hair firing. As it heats, the materials inside combust or react against the surface, leaving behind marks that can't be fully predicted or repeated.
Because so many variables are at play, Les treats every saggar firing as an experiment, keeping detailed notes on the materials, combinations, and placements he used on each vase, bowl, or pot and what the results were. That record shapes every form that follows, which is part of why no two pieces of Smoking Turtle saggar-fired pottery are ever alike.
How the Pit Firing Works
Pit firing is one of the oldest pottery techniques, where pottery forms are surrounded by combustible material and fired in open flame and smoke rather than inside a sealed kiln, producing rich, unpredictable coloring directly from the fire itself.
At Smoking Turtle Studio, Les fires his pit-fired work in an above-ground container rather than a dug-in-ground pit. He lights the fire and lets it burn for a bit to get established, then places a lid on the kiln to trap the smoke inside, which is what drives the patterning on each vase, bowl, or pot.
Like his saggar firing, every pit firing is its own experiment. The combustible materials change from firing to firing: bamboo and sawdust one time, wood and newspaper the next. The chemicals and application methods vary just as much. Les might place copper carbonate at one end of the kiln, wrap a pot in newspaper and slip, or dip a vase in ferric chloride before it ever goes in. No two firings are packed or prepared the same way.
Once packed and lidded, the fire is left to burn down, and the work stays in the container overnight or longer as it cools completely. This slow burn and gradual cooling gives the smoke, flame, and chemicals time to work into the burnished surface, producing the deep, varied coloring pit-fired pottery is known for.
Because the fuel, chemicals, placement, and airflow change with every firing, no two pit-fired vases, bowls, or pots from Smoking Turtle Studio are ever the same.
(828) 216-1037 | les@smokingturtlestudio.com