The team will use about 700 specially made bricks designed to withstand temperatures in excess of 1,700 degrees. The students are careful with the mallets; each brick costs about $7 and weighs nearly 9 pounds.
“This must be my 50th kiln, easily,” Ransom says. And he’s especially pleased with the work on this one. “You guys are killing it,” he tells his students. “This is great. We’re going to put whistles going through the arch so that when it gets hot enough, you’ll hear it.
“I’m having so much fun with this kiln.”
An Eckerd faculty member since 1996, Ransom teaches ceramics, sculpture, studio critique and interdisciplinary arts. He also is the founder of the Brian Ransom Ceramics Ensemble, with whom he has recorded and performed his own compositions. Ransom and other musicians play a clay harp, ceramic flugelhorn, whistling water jar, flutes, ceramic bells and other instruments.
But he’s always looking to build a better kiln. Just a few feet from the new kiln is a wood-fired Anagama kiln Ransom and his students built in January 2018.
