Gwyn talks to Peter Hylands about wood firing and her own wood fire kiln. A potters film includes a wood firing sequence and shows just how much skill is required to achieve a successful outcome to the firing. The wood firing starts early in the morning and ends in the early hours of the following day.

The Gwyn Hanssen Pigott Education Resources Pack contains a more detailed film of the firing and explains the process in greater depth.

Gwyn, like Ivan McMeekin before her, met and worked with the British potter Michael Cardew. Michael had this to say about the kiln.

'Clayware, however much skill and knowledge has gone into its making, has no commercial value until it is fired. The kiln is therefore the potter's most important piece of equipment.

Kilns and firing methods have evolved, in the long history of ceramics, towards two main objects, firing at a higher temperature and the economy of fuel. Since fuel is by far the most expensive of raw materials, second only to time and skilled labour in the total cost of production, its efficient use has become a major preoccupation in the design of kilns for industry, culminating in the tunnel kiln, in which almost no heat is wasted'.

Ever careful about her own environmental practice, in this tradition Gwyn chooses her fuel with great care and works her own kiln with great efficiency as she takes the wood firing beyond thirteen hundred degrees.