04/08/2026
We're back home after a fab week at Anglian Potter's Camp 2026. There's plenty of pot photos to come, but here's Saturday night's centrepiece - a bottle kiln! 🍾 🧴 🍾 🧴 🍾
This was made from several hundred empty bottles (wine, beer, rum, gin and a base made of champagne bottles) cemented together with a clay-sawdust-sand mortar, that lit up like a stained glass window in the evening. Despite reaching temperatures over 800°c, the bottles didn't shatter, but the necks melted into weird, gloopy shapes.
On dismantling, some bottles were suitable for taking home (we nabbed a couple as keepsakes) whereas others finished as razor-sharp points, dubbed 'killer-penguins' by a fellow potter! 🐧
Oh, and we even managed to fire some pots inside too - the turquoise raku glaze looks pretty good, considering what it's gone through 😂
