ART OF FIRE

Wood Kiln Ceramics At Il Baciarino, Tuscany

June 4 - June 13, 2026

Fire is not random. It feels that way at first — the colours shifting in the peephole, the cones moving unevenly, the results that surprise you even when you thought you knew what you were doing. But fire has logic. It has mechanics. And once you understand them, the kiln stops being something that happens to your work and starts being something you can have a conversation with.

That is what this retreat is about.

The Kiln

Cantico is a wood kiln built by Emma Smith on the land at Il Baciarino in 2023. It is a modified Olson Fast Fire cross-draft kiln, designed for the kind of firing we do here — fast yet atmospheric. She holds roughly a cubic metre of work and takes approximately eighteen hours to fire from cold to temperature.

Over ten days you will learn how she works. How the flame path moves through the chamber. How loading affects the draw. How stoking rhythm changes the atmosphere and therefore the surface of the work. How to read the kiln's temperature not just from a pyrometer but from colour, from the way the flame behaves, from what the cones are telling you.

You will make work for Cantico. You will load her. You will stoke her. You will be there when we crack the door.

We glaze simply or not at all, because the kiln does its own glazing — the ash, the carbon, the flashing that happens where flame meets clay. We spend time understanding how to set work in the kiln to use these effects deliberately rather than leaving them to chance.

What We Make

The ten days divide between the studio (first seven days) and the kiln (last three). In the studio we throw and hand-build — work designed for wood firing, which means thinking about form and surface differently than you would for an electric or gas kiln. Wood firing rewards simplicity. It rewards surface that has something for the flame to find.

A Typical Day

In the studio days leading up to the firing we work in the morning and explore Tuscany in the afternoon — the beach, the hill towns, the market at Vetulonia. The firing day itself is its own rhythm: early start, sustained attention, the particular camaraderie that comes from tending something together through the night.

The table at Il Baciarino is worth sitting at. We eat well. The evenings before the firing are some of the best of the retreat — the anticipation of what the kiln will do is its own kind of pleasure.

Who This Retreat Is For

Art of Fire is for ceramicists who already have a working relationship with clay. You do not need previous wood firing experience — most people who come have never fired a wood kiln — but you should be comfortable enough in the studio to make work independently. The retreat is not the place to learn to throw. It is the place to learn what fire can do to the work you already know how to make.

Eight participants maximum.

2027 Dates and Price

June 4–13, 2027

€2,600 per person. This covers all tuition, materials, studio access, all meals and drinks, all day trips and cultural excursions, and pick-up and drop-off from Grosseto train station.

Accommodation is separate. See below for options and pricing.

A note on availability: all 2026 retreats are currently full. Early booking for 2027 is strongly recommended.

Before booking I recommend spending time with the Il Baciarino website and Instagram — it is the kind of place that sells itself once you see it.

Not sure if wood firing is where you are yet? Write to me. That is exactly the kind of question worth asking before you book.