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All of the traditional ware was placed direcdy on the sandy floor of
the kiln with a finger-width space left between vessels. Arie Meaders's
artware was placed atop ring-shaped setters of diameters between one
and four inches, which her husband had fashioned from a mixture of
red clay and kaolin. The setters protected the small vases and cookie
jars from adhering to the sand and permitted some stacking. 8
It was Cheever's practice to start burning his kiln around four
o'clock in the afternoon. Initially, he would clean out the firebox from
the previous burning (some ashes of which were used in his glaze
mixture). He would then start a small tempering fire of green pine, or
occasionally oak splinters, in the pit. Explained Lanier, "When you
start the fire in it, it's more or less like starting a campfire. Get the fire
going pretty good and just keep building on to it. And the clay has
minerals and moisture in it that has to be cured out. The moisture can
be dried out if you take your time about it, but if you try to rush it, it
gives you trouble."
At firing, the front loading port of the kiln could be bricked up all at
once or in stages. Lanier felt the decision depended on what he was
doing at the moment. In any event, the door was sealed and daubed
with mud before the fire was very warm, leaving just enough draft
around the bottom to insure a flow of oxygen to the fire (fig. 34). All
loading of fuel after mis point took place through an opening in the
front left side of the kiln just above the firebox. After about six hours
of slow firing, with fuel added hourly, the potters stoked the fire and
retired for the night. 9
Returning to work the following morning before dawn, the elder
Meaders restored the fire in the firebox and prepared to add his better
fuel to the blaze. The best-firing wood by Cheever's estimate was
"hard pine" with "lots of terpentine and resin in it." In previous years,
such wood had been plentiful, and local potters had busied themselves
stripping surrounding mountainsides of trees. According to Cheever's
neighbor, Guy Dorsey, "Whenever you was gonna go blasting off,
where you could stand about three feet outside that door where you
was pitching it in, that blaze meets you, catching hold of it. That's the
kind of wood I love to burn. I bet you could burn a whole kiln of ware
as hot as it could get with regular pine wood." In time, however, the
good fuel gave way to "sorrier" wood and waste from the sawmills.
The Meaderses in 1967 mostly obtained slabwood from a local
peddler at a cost of $12.50 a cord —a reasonable price, yet a far cry
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