“Fire in the Belly”

In the beginning, clay met fire.

Before there were kilns, there were fire circles. And before that — flame itself.

Not in a kiln — those came later — but in open pits and embers, where smoke curled into sky and wet earth hardened into memory. Fire wasn’t just a tool in ancient pottery. It was a presence.

Across time, fire meant transformation: soft clay became strong. Ash fell, glaze bloomed. In Persia, Japan, and First Nations fire pits, heat was instinctive, sacred — not programmed.

And it gathered people. Around the fire: stories, tea, silence.

This week in our ceramic studio in Abbotsford, we installed a pot belly stove. It isn’t a kiln. It’s not a digital heater. It’s something deeper: a cast-iron heart in the middle of our creative space.

We’ll warm our hands. Boil tea. Stand too close.

The stove gives more than heat — it brings presence. It transforms the room and reflects pottery rituals as old as clay itself.

Even now, in a modern pottery studio, the fire continues its quiet work: drawing us close to one another and to the ancient heat that still lives in our vessels.