Today was officially day 4 of the Third European Wood Fire Conference in LeBorne, France. It is just such a magical place. To reach LeBorne from Bourges, about a 40 minute drive using winding country roads, you pass through corn and sunflower fields. As you get closer, you enter the forests that have supplied the potters in the area with wood for centuries. Indeed, several Roman-Gallo kilns have been unearthed and the conference has recreated two of these for the participants to see how they were constructed. My very good friend, Dr Julia Nema from Budapest, spoke to the influences of Malevich and Moholgy-Nagy on her light sculptures while Fred Olsen provided everyone with a reason to use cartable for building a wood kiln instead of bricks. Other events included a round table discussion on the future of wood firing, tours to two local museums, and, of course, the numerous open studios of the potters living and working in LeBorne. You do not have to look far to find pottery sitting in gardens, on shelves of buildings or gracing gardens. The anagama kiln will be finished firing tomorrow and if the rain would stop we might actually see the bottle kiln finished!
The first conference was held in Brollin and my friend, Markus Boehm, who came to build the Bourry Box kiln for the School in June, headed up that committee. Priscilla Mouritzen was part of the team that hosted the second conference at the International Ceramic Research Centre in Skaelskor, Germany. At that time only Denmark was wanting to host the second one. It appears that was the case with the third being in LeBorne but, the events are so successful that this time there are four centres vying for the fourth conference in 2022. It reminds me now of the Olympics. But, I keep asking: who decides who will be the host? Since this has not been a problem previously, no one seems to be able to answer. The short list contenders are: Russia, Latvia, Barcelona, and Belgium. Everyone will find out Friday morning!
Meanwhile, I am staring at a stack of catalogues and books that I would never be able to readily find in Canada or on Amazon – as well as some pottery – and trying to figure out how I am going to get this back to Canada next week. The local potters would have sold much more to ‘the foreigners’ if someone had the foresight to have a ‘for charge’ packing and mailing business locally for this event.
