Len Cook's anagama 3

SideStoke home | Len Cook home | Anagama home

The kiln at full throttle. The red glow some distance below the top of the chimney marks the lower part of a stainless steel extension to the brickwork.

Metal extension for chimney

Len planned to operate this kiln with only a passive damper at the foot of the chimney, as shown in the image at left. This proved to be unsatisfactory, and for a while he had an insane method of building a loose brick wall across the kiln to act as a damper. It was accessible from the passive damper opening and progressively demolished as each firing continued. Later he retro-fitted the active damper shown above.

Left: interior of the tail section. The white patch at the far end is the passive damper hole (partly obscured by some loose bricks) and the white sections at the top are castable material used to hold the arch bricks together.

Right: the floor steps.

Length of the anagama: 5 metres

Total floor rise: 1 metre