September 8, 2005

Naysan McIlhargey stoked the fire inside the new wood-fired kiln at his business, Miami Valley Pottery, on Hyde Road, during a four-day firing last month.

At a modest residence on Hyde Road last month, a young potter lit a match that started the first four-day firing of his massive, 500-square-foot wood-fired kiln.

The flame grew lazily at first, then as stokers came to feed it, the blaze crackled and grew until the chimney belched black smoke, and explosions inside the kiln threatened anyone who dared to go near it.

Inside, red hot pots were aglow. Naysan McIlhargey and his wife, Jalana Lazar, had set in motion their dream to run a wood-fired pottery in Yellow Springs.

Their business, Miami Valley Pottery, revolves around what may be the only wood-fired kiln of this magnitude in the area. McIlhargey designed the 30-foot-long kiln based on a thousand-year tradition from China and Japan and the custom engineering of local experts who had the knowledge to make a structure that could withstand the 2,400 degrees Farenheit it requires.

With room inside for 2,000 pots made from three tons of clay, the kiln takes nearly seven cords of hardwood to fire and was never meant to be done single-handedly. Two weeks ago 30 people from Yellow Springs, Vermont, Connecticut and New York came to stoke the kiln around the clock, getting it to the right temperature, consulting on the fire’s intensity, making food for workers, and standing by to witness and pray that everything would go smoothly.

Fulfilling a dream
McIlhargey took the advice of his mentor, Todd Piker, who told him in 2001, at the start of McIlhargey’s apprenticeship in Connecticut, that he would never be able to build a pottery without the support of others who believed in what he was doing. Knowing the support of his family, friends and the Yellow Springs community would exceed any he would find elsewhere, McIlhargey and Lazar returned to establish their business near the village.

McIlhargey’s journey to becoming a potter was marked by challenges that might have derailed anyone with less commitment to his craft.

“Some people go to church. I don’t do that, but I get to go into my studio where it’s spiritual and meditative,” he said. “The process of making pots is beautiful. It’s such a joy.”

McIlhargey, a 1993 Yellow Springs High School graduate, threw his first piece of clay on the wheel of local potters David and Keiko Hergesheimer as a community experience student in high school. After studying and practicing in the wood-fired tradition at Earlham College, and completing an apprenticeship with Piker, McIlhargey and his mother and stepfather, Farzaneh and David Mader, purchased property on Hyde Road in April 2004 to build a pottery.

David Mader, who has 18 years of experience as a local carpenter, agreed to help McIlhargey every step of the way. They first remodeled the house, then retrofitted a large outbuilding into a studio and erected a kiln shed. Finally, in September 2004, it was time to start the kiln.

McIlhargey designed the kiln with help from a dozen potters around the country and local residents Mike Breza, Tom Noftle and Tom LaMers. Mader, whose primary work is in home building, had never built an arch, and found the challenge of creating an arched kiln intriguing, he said.

Using 12,000 bricks, some purchased and some donated from Morris Bean & Company, they built a wooden arch frame and laid the bricks on top of it. One day just before Thanksgiving, as McIlhargey and Mader were standing inside the kiln, the arch collapsed and crushed them.

Not seriously injured, but emotionally exhausted, McIlhargey had to stop and regroup. At 9 the following morning, when his family came to bring flowers and food, they found him in bed.

“I’ve never seen him in bed at that hour before,” his mother said. His sister Nacim Sajabi said that he was depressed.

Looking back, McIlhargey said he felt that they had failed. He felt humbled and small in relation to the process, and likened the experience to watching the fire inside a kiln.

“When you see a flame that hot going through it, that inferno, you forget about the pots, you forget about everything because the flame is stronger than all of us,” he said. “You give yourself up to what’s going on inside. It’s the kiln goddess that’s in control in there.”

He realized afterward, he said, that it was his own overly focused persistence that led to his failing. He had wanted so badly to build the right kind of arch that he had forgotten to think about the buttressing needed to support it.

But instead of giving up, he found renewed energy. After just one day of reflection and rest, McIlhargey, Mader and their family and friends began cleaning up the rubble and preparing to start again — this time with 120,000 pounds of cement supports to hold up the arch.

The body of the kiln and chimney were completed last spring and summer. Most of the pots were thrown in just a few months and decorated by Lazar, who learned Japanese brush painting in New York before moving here.

Family members said they are awed by McIlhargey’s resilience, but that they never doubted he would reach his goal. “He believes in what he is doing. He had a vision, and he knew ultimately that it would work,” Sajabi said.

Handmade appeal
The job of a potter takes an extreme amount of physicality, and it’s not a particularly logical way to make a living, said Piker, who came from Connecticut to help with last month’s firing. All potters are crazy, he said, but especially one who builds a kiln of this size, and has to be committed to a certain volume of work to fill and fire it several times a year.

Handmade pots are a rarity, but rarer still are the wood-fired stonewares distinguished by their earthy matted glazes and rusty red and deep golden flashing formed by the ash particulates flying around the kiln, Piker said. While it takes a lot more work, skill and attention to fire with wood, the artistic element comes from the unpredictable effect the impurities from the burning wood have on the pots, something gas kilns can’t do, he said.

The pots aren’t just beautiful, they are also functional and meant to be used. “What we’re doing is trying to recreate the ethos of the potters of old who were producing things in volume that people used on an everyday basis,” Piker said.

Production “by hand” and “in volume” doesn’t happen very often these days, when people are in the habit of purchasing the affordable Wal-Mart special, McIlhargey said. Because of industrialization, he believes we as a culture have nearly lost the ability to appreciate handmade things. McIlhargey wants to help revitalize the perspective that art and function go together to make our lives not just easier but also more aesthetic, and ultimately, more spiritually satisfying.

A community of people has begun to form around the pottery, and McIlhargey said he has been amazed at how many people turned up to help because they saw that he needed it.

Nance Parent and Meg Halpin, who have spent the last month at the pottery, said they were attracted by McIlhargey’s work ethic and the care he and his family give to the community. “It’s an extension of what he’s put out, it’s coming back,” Parent said.

Pots glow red hot, baking in the new wood-fired kiln at Miami Valley Pottery

Chance to see the kiln
McIlhargey and Lazar will host a grand opening for the kiln next weekend at the pottery, located at 145 Hyde Road. They invite everyone to come out Friday, Sept. 16, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 17 and 18, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., to check out the kiln, tour the studio and see the newly fired pottery. More information about the pottery is available at www.miamivalleypottery.com.

The Miami Valley Pottery will fire the kiln again this December, before McIlhargey’s show at the Wind’s Cafe.