Hikidashi-Guro Tea Bowls Masterclass

Exploring the dialogue between fire, timing, and transformation

In October 2025, I participated in the Hikidashi-Guro Tea Bowls Masterclass at the International Ceramics Studio in Kecskemét, Hungary, a week-long workshop led by artist Douglas Black. For several days, I worked surrounded by silence, heat, and anticipation, waiting for the precise moment when the glowing clay leaves the kiln.

International Ceramics Studio (Kecskemét, Hungary), Masterclass with Douglas Black, 7–11 Oct 2025.

This experience was not about making flawless bowls. It was about learning to trust the rhythm of fire and to accept the instant when control gives way to chance. That fragile moment, when the piece is pulled out still burning, reveals what I love most about ceramics, the meeting point between skill, patience, and surrender.

Glowing hikidashi-guro tea bowl being pulled from the kiln with metal tongs.

What is Hikidashi-Guro

Hikidashi-guro is a traditional Japanese firing technique that creates deep, mirror-black glazes.
The name means “pulled out black” because each piece is literally taken out of the kiln while still glowing hot, usually between 1100 and 1220°C.

The moment of removal is followed by rapid cooling, sometimes in open air, sometimes by quenching in water, or by placing the bowl into reduction materials such as ash or sawdust.
Those few seconds decide everything. The surface reacts instantly, and the iron-rich glaze turns black, metallic, or softly matte, depending on the atmosphere and speed of cooling.

During the masterclass, I understood how much of this technique relies on timing and intuition.
You can’t measure it; you feel it.
Too soon, and the glaze stays unfinished; too late, and it burns out of depth.
Each firing felt like a quiet test of courage, standing close to the fire, trusting the senses, and letting the flame take part in the creation.

What fascinates me about hikidashi-guro is that it isn’t only about achieving a color.
It’s about the brief dialogue between fire and clay, control and surrender, a conversation that leaves its trace on the surface forever.

Hikidashi guro tea bowl cooling in ash and flames after being pulled from the kiln.

Inside the Process

The week in Kecskemét was built around precision and patience. Each day began with the same quiet rhythm: centering the clay, refining the form, preparing for the fire. Douglas encouraged us to work without hesitation, to throw fast, trust the hand, and let the form decide its own proportions.

After shaping, the bowls were left to dry slowly before being coated in the iron-rich glazes that define the hikidashi-guro surface. At night, the kiln was loaded, shelves stacked like layers of anticipation. When the firing reached its peak, the pulling began: one by one, the glowing bowls were lifted from the kiln, the air turning them black in seconds.

Douglas’s approach was a dialogue between science and intuition. He spoke about oxidation, reduction, and how shifts in temperature alter the glaze’s depth, as well as about rhythm, trust, and silence. That balance, I realized, is what keeps the technique alive: the meeting point of precision and chance.

“The first time I pulled a bowl, I felt its weight disappear in the light.”

Placing a glazed tea bowl on the kiln shelf before firing, showing the textured surface.

Moments from the Firing

The studio struck a balance between quiet focus and raw energy.
Each stage of the firing had its rhythm: preparing glazes, stacking the kiln shelves, waiting, watching the glow.
When the lid finally lifted, the heat escaped like breath, revealing the bowls inside still alive with light.

Working side by side with other potters reminded me how shared silence can speak louder than words.
Everyone moved with purpose, reading the color of the fire, trusting the timing, holding that fragile balance between control and surrender.

Examining the texture and foot of the bisque-fired tea bowl - the foundation of balance and form. Placing the tea bowls on kiln shelves, ready to meet the fire

Shaping the clay by hand, pressing each curve into rhythm before it meets the flame. Using shell wads beneath bowls, allowing heat to pass while preventing sticking

Surface details of the unfired clay, showing traces of tools, touch, and raw earth. Detail of the tea bowl foot, showing marks of the handmade process

Bowls prepared for firing - waiting quietly on kiln shelves before the heat begins. Tea bowls stacked on kiln shelves, waiting for the first breath of fire

Inside the kiln, where the temperature rises and the clay starts to glow with life. The kiln opens briefly, revealing the bowls glowing at peak temperature

The moment of precision - removing the red-hot bowl from the kiln with steady hands. Preparing to pull the bowls from the kiln, moments before the fire’s release

Teamwork and timing - opening the kiln at its peak heat, guided only by color and instinct. Pulling the bowls from the kiln, a moment of shared focus

Cooling in open air, surrounded by smoke and the smell of burning ash. Catching the precise moment when fire yields to form

The bowl rests on the slab, still red with heat, its final transformation beginning. As the bowl touches the plate, caught between fire and cooling

Sparks and embers swirl as the bowl meets the ashes - fire transforming into surface. Moments of smoke and hiss, when the glaze starts to breathe

Smoke rises and settles - the final breath of fire before the surface turns black. Smoke fades, leaving the surface still and dark

Hand holding a hikidashi-guro bowl showing metallic glaze surface after firing. Holding a finished hikidashi-guro bowl, the surface still carrying the memory of fire

Artistic Reflection

The more I worked with fire, the more I understood that it doesn’t belong to us.
It can be guided, but never controlled. Each piece carries its own conversation with heat, air, and time, and I am only there to listen.

The bowls that emerged from this firing are far from perfect, yet they hold a kind of truth. Their uneven lines, their soft metallic sheen, even the tiny marks of the tongs are not mistakes but memories of a moment when the clay was still alive.

Every firing teaches a small lesson in humility. In that brief, burning instant, you see how the material remembers everything: touch, rhythm, hesitation, and release.

“There is no repetition in fire, only transformation.”

The Path of Learning

Every new technique is an invitation to unlearn.
The hikidashi-guro masterclass was not about acquiring skill, but about refining attention to rhythm, timing, and silence.

That awareness now lives quietly in my work. It doesn’t appear as a direct imitation of what I learned, but as a way of seeing: patient, balanced, open to surprise.

In the end, these experiences shape Stonessa, not through visible motifs, but through presence, precision, and the calm that follows the flame.

That calm often found its expression in ritual. Each bowl, after rising from flame, awaited its return to purpose.

Once a day during the masterclass, Douglas prepared and served matcha in silence, performing the ritual with calm precision.

On the final day, we drank from our own newly fired bowls, completing the circle from making to use.

Artists examining hikidashi-guro tea bowls during the masterclass, reflecting on results.

After each firing, I return to the studio with a quieter mind.
The lessons of hikidashi-guro are not just about the bowl, but about how to see, how to wait, listen, and respond to what the material wants to become.

That sensibility now lives in every Stonessa piece.

Explore Stonessa Bowls and Vessels.