Painting with Fire - Chris Lewis' Anagama, England
by Alex Whittaker
Alex Whittaker caught up with Chris Lewis, one of the UK’s pre-eminent contemporary ceramic artists, just a few nights into his annual wood firing in Sussex, England. Continuous, twenty-four hour shifts ensured the anagama kiln burned evenly for a week, resulting in distinct and remarkable ceramic vessels of incredible beauty, equally rooted in the ceramic traditions of East Asia, West Africa, England and beyond.
The Summer Exhibition is currently on display at South Heighton Pottery, where the results of this year’s firing can be seen alongside a selection of works by Ursula Mommens and various fabrics collected by Lewis during his travels in West Africa. A link to Chris Lewis’ website with further information can be found here
Chris Lewis Summer Exhibition 2025 at South Heighton Pottery, Newhaven, Sussex UK - image Alex Whittaker
Origins
The traditional Japanese process of anagama or rather East-Asian ‘cave kiln’ firing has a history dating back centuries, with the technology being introduced from China, via Korea, around the 5th century. Anagama has its roots in the climbing ‘dragon kilns’ popular in south China, where some of the earliest example’s date back to the Shang Dynasty period (1600 – 1046 BCE) [1], which saw an increase in high fired stoneware production. The same high temperatures achieved in an anagama would later come to revolutionize the ceramic production of Japan, resulting in a unique type of pottery, impossible to replicate due to the unpredictable nature of the wood fired kiln. Anagama firing has since been valorised by a now transcultural network of ceramic artists, largely for the natural ash glazes it produces, which cannot be created by any other means.
CHRIS LEWIS, anagama fired vessel on display at South Heighton Pottery, 2025 - image Alex Whittaker
Each year the English studio potter Chris Lewis undertakes a weeklong anagama firing at his studio in Sussex, South-East England. The body of work comprises pots thrown and sculptures built during the winter months to be fired in the spring, in readiness for his annual summer exhibition at the pottery. This cycle, seasonal and aligned with nature in both materials and interval, has been ongoing for many years. More recently, Lewis has reduced the regularity of his firings from almost once a month, at their peak, to now just one per year.
Due to the duration and intensity of the process – with each firing taking anything up to a week - the work is dependent upon the involvement of the community. A group of volunteers is required to diligently stoke the kiln under Lewis’ supervision, until the desired temperatures are reached, sustained, and finally reduced until the kiln is deemed cool enough to be opened and the resulting wares removed. I caught up with Lewis just a few nights into the firing, where back-to-back six-hour shifts ensured the kiln burned evenly throughout the night, resulting in distinct and remarkably beautiful ceramic works of art.
URSULA MOMMENS various works on display at the INDIGO exhibition at South Heighton Pottery, May - June 2025 - image Alex Whittaker
South Heighton
URSULA MOMMENS in her studio, c 1950 [fig. 1]
The pottery at South Heighton was originally established by Ursula Mommens in 1951, where she practiced until her death in 2010. Mommens, a key figure in British Studio Pottery, studied under William Staite Murray at the Royal College of Art, and later for six months with Michael Cardew at the Wenford Bridge pottery in Cornwall. However, it was at South Heighton that Mommens produced most of her wood and gas fired stoneware. She initially explored vibrant earthenware, then later stoneware and porcelain, all with a focus on functional design.
URSULA MOMMENS (1908-2010); a shallow stoneware dish covered in kaki glaze with wax resist decoration, diameter 21.5cm [fig. 2]
In 1976, a young potter called Chris Lewis arrived at South Heighton. Under agreement with Mommens he transformed the old farm buildings into an additional studio and pottery space, later purchasing the house and grounds. Today, he utilises the beautiful, archetypal English garden as an exhibition space, and some of the outbuildings as showrooms for his ceramic wares. It was in one of the outbuildings that, during the low light of a mid-April evening I would meet Chris, who had invited me to participate on one of the kiln stoking shifts. I hoped that this might give us plenty of opportunity to talk, given that six hours lay ahead of us, only occasionally interrupted by our methodical stoking of the anagama.
Outbuildings converted to studio space by Chris Lewis, South Heighton Pottery, 2025 - image Alex Whittaker
As I approached the barn, I could already see smoke and flames billowing from the chimney into the indigo night sky. I turned the corner while navigating vast log piles - fuel for the hours ahead - before finding Chris relaxing in an armchair, close to the mouth of the anagama. The room was incredibly still, with none of the roaring heat and drama that I had anticipated. On the contrary, the inferno was seamlessly encased inside the kiln, so that you were hardly aware that it was there at all, aside from the occasional pop and crackle of ash faggots, pushed in through the mouth and port holes of the kiln by Chris earlier that evening. He smiled and gestured to me to sit down where the warm glow of the fire illuminated us.
CHRIS LEWIS stoking the anagama kiln, May 2025 - image Alex Whittaker
Chris worked with Ursula Mommens for many years at South Heighton where he regularly met with her for lunch, eventually supporting her during her later years in the general, day-to-day running of her own studio. How much cross fertilization of ideas took place is somewhat unclear, but the two potters do share certain artistic concerns. Lewis himself spoke of the inevitability of her influence upon his work, considering the sheer amount of time that the pair spent in one another’s company. The term ‘influence’, though, can be slippery, especially with an artist such as Lewis, who actively samples from the rich international history of ceramic production.
Mommens, who did so much to raise the profile of female British studio potters at a time when the scene was dominated by male artists, was very aware of the early 20th century zeitgeist perpetuated by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada. At its core, the studio pottery movement in Britain sought to reposition potters as independent artists. The movement was inherently outward looking in perspective, with many of its practitioners’ finding inspiration in ceramics from China, Korea and Japan. While Mommens initially became interested in the contemporary trend towards a hybrid Anglo-East Asian aesthetic, she did not consider the approach to be an end in itself. She went on to become equally drawn to early Persian, Cretan and Hispano-Moresque pots and their lively brushwork, often referencing more than one visual culture in equal measure. [2].
Lewis’ work too shares a similarly broad range of aesthetic references: an awareness of east Asian production techniques in firing and surface finishes, as well as formal characteristics akin to pottery traditionally produced in West Africa witnessed by Lewis during trips to Nigeria and Burkina Faso, where he spent up to a year at a time. He speaks too of being equally struck by the liveliness of Cretan pottery. Many of his works also incorporate bold decorative motifs and formal elements that relate to a global history of ceramics, as much as they do any one East-Asian tradition.
Exchanges
Lewis, like Mommens, considers himself to have been more impacted by the work of Michael Cardew than Bernard Leach. During our meeting, he mentioned he felt that many of the previously revered pots by Leach ‘hadn’t aged well’, and that the pots by Cardew held much more interest for him. Interestingly it was Cardew, who perhaps more than any other potter, had been instrumental in the revival of the distinctly British slipware tradition after becoming Leach’s first true apprentice at the pottery he set up with Hamada in St Ives. Cardew wrote in detail about the impact of his first encounters with Chinese ceramics via Hamada and Leach upon his early visits to Cornwall:
MICHAEL CARDEW, Bowl with 'Bird with Five Eggs' design, 1930, Earthenware, painted and incised slips and glazes. 7.5 cm (2 7/8 in.) high, 28.5 cm (11 1/4 in.) diameter [fig. 3]
‘Leach listened… turned to me and said, ‘All right; but first let’s find out what your ideas are.’ And he went to the shelf, picked up a curious deep bowl with incised fluting on the outside, put it right into my hands and said, ‘What do you make of that? … My good angel protected me and made me hold my tongue. Of course I could make nothing of it, having never seen anything like it before.’[3]
Cardew went on on to speak openly about his desire to develop a syncretic form of pottery, stating:
‘…the treatment of a Chinese porcelain plate or bowl speaks of clay, and of the needs, functions and expression of human users and makers in the same language as a European earthenware pitcher or a West African water pot’. [4]
MICHAEL CARDEW, Pair of Bird plates [fig. 4]
CHRIS LEWIS, anagama fired lidded jar, 2025 - image Alex Whittaker
I couldn’t help but think of Cardew’s first exchanges with Leach at St. Ives during my visit to Lewis at South Heighton. Clearly there was, in 1923, already a desire to develop a more universal language of pottery, at a time of heightened creative exchange between England and Japan. While Chris Lewis does sample from aspects of East-Asian craft traditions, notably in the use of firing techniques such as anagama as well as formal characteristics of certain pots, similarly to Cardew, there is a distinct focus here on the value of surface decoration. Repeat zig-zag patterns and almost archaic crosshatchings provide a rich surface, patina-like appearance recalling other, much older visual and cultural histories. Animal motifs regularly appear too in the lyrical form of stylised birds or anthropomorphic figures upon the surface of the clay body itself. In one piece the form of the Japanese tea bowl becomes embellished with what appear as prehistoric saw tooth designs of another, different culture entirely.
Lewis’ interest in the ceramic craft of forgotten or disappearing cultures renders him an artistic archaeologist of sorts, borrowing an element of physical form here, or surface pattern there, projecting these slowly disappearing aspects of visual culture into the future with his own, contemporary vision. For me, his studio is a melting pot of stylistic reference points, a visual reflection of the cross-cultural nature of pottery development - hastened perhaps by the speed which we can encounter and access various approaches and histories in our current technologically dependent society.
CHRIS LEWIS, anagama fired platter, 2025 - image Alex Whittaker
Variables
Studio at South Heighton - image A.Whittaker
The term anagama refers primarily to the Japanese technique of kiln building in which the fire box is essentially located in the same chamber as the clay vessels intended for firing. The fuel, seasoned timber of varying types, combusts in the same space as the pots with the chamber neither structurally divided nor separate from the main part of the kiln space. Here, where temperatures can peak at 1300 degrees Celsius, the heat is so intense that it causes ash swept by updrafts to melt directly onto the surface of the pots, creating a unique type of glaze. Because the resulting effect varies wildly according to the movement of the heat and flames throughout the kiln chamber, the term ‘painting with fire’ has since been coined.
Though the anagama kiln method was popularized in Japan at a time when ceramic production needed to be revolutionized, it was introduced around the fifth century to Japan via Korea where the method had already been mastered. Prior to the introduction of the anagama kiln, Japanese pottery was largely fired on the ground or in shallow pits and known as Haji or open fired pottery, a technique that was extremely successful and resulted the production of some of the earliest pots made in Japan during the Jomon and Yayoi periods. However, open pit firing had its limitations – perhaps most notably the fact that temperature could not exceed 600-900 degrees Celsius, which was perfect for the Jomon or Yayoi earthenware, but not nearly extreme enough for the high fired and sought after ceramic ware known as Sue (su-eh), which was being produced in Korea at the time. Anagama could facilitate this necessary increase in temperature to between 1100 – 1250 degrees. While anagama kilns were eventually developed into various other forms of more advanced kilns, notably the noborigama, Japan saw a renewed interest in them in the early twentieth century, with many sites being discovered and reconstructed in a revival of interest in what was later to become considered the ‘national craft’ of Mingei.
This ‘network development of kilns also reflects the phenomenon of cross-cultural development’ [5], certainly with regards to ceramic production and it is worth noting here the work of Dr Robin Wilson at Oxford University, England. Wilson established the pioneering Oxford Kilns project which is now the main anagama kiln site in the UK [6]. The project aims to explore the community aspect of the act of firing, in an anthropological sense, as much as the outcome of the pots produced.
CHRIS LEWIS - various anagama fired vessels - image A. Whittaker
Chris Lewis built the first of his anagama in 2000, replacing a two-chambered wood fired kiln that he had used for over twenty years. Though he has now reduced the number of firings to a week-long, annual session, the involvement of a community of kiln stokers is imperative. Anagama firing is a communal process of learning through doing, a fundamental act where each stoker’s contribution may affect the outcome of the ceramics with the movement of their bodies through time and space. Each pot fired is a result of a combination of variables which, once set in action, take a path of their own. These variables are often surprising - or frustrating - for even the most experienced ceramicist.
When asked just how much control one might have over the resulting outcome of the surface finish of the pots, Lewis simply replied “not much” with a wry smile. I couldn’t help but wonder if it was in our attempts to overcome the constraints of the kiln in which the creative act itself resides. By attempting to control the uncontrollable, happenstance is welcomed into the process often at the risk of total loss. In a letter written by Pere Francois Xavier d’Entrecolles in eighteenth century Jingdezhen, China, the sheer challenge of successful wood firing is laid bare:
‘It is rare for a furnace firing to be entirely successful, as often it is entirely lost. Sometimes when one opens the furnace one finds that the porcelain and saggers are reduced to a single mass, as hard as a rock, because of too fierce a fire; or some badly conditioned saggers can ruin it all; or it may not be easy to regulate the fire the way that it should be; or it may be that the nature of the weather instantly changes the nature of the fire and the quality of the subject on which it works. The quality of wood too, affects the firing” [7]
So many variables – each one as notorious to predict as the weather itself - meant that success rates were very often compromised. It is perhaps because of the interplay between the intentional and the serendipitous, the laborious and the incidental that many find anagama to be so creatively rewarding. Certainly, it is true that nothing of the method is truly apparent until several days after the event, once the kiln has completely cooled and can finally be opened and the results clearly seen.
CHRIS LEWIS stoneware vase, height 24cm [fig. 5]
A few days after meeting with Lewis I received an email to say that all had gone well and that he was extremely pleased with the pots from the firing. He’d taken the decision to open the kiln earlier than planned, so that he could see the results before he departed on a trip to Crete. There, he told me, he would be visiting a now thriving ‘pottery village’ which had experienced a recent revival, due to the possibility of wares being promoted and sold overseas via the internet. It would be weeks before I would return to see the outcome of the firing at the annual Summer Exhibition held in the barns and gardens of the pottery, but the results proved to be more than worth the wait.
Chris Lewis’ annual Summer Exhibition is currently available to view during the daytime from 11am – 5.30pm and remains open on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th of June, as well as Saturday 14th and Sunday 15th June. The exhibition comprises work from this year’s anagama firing undertaken in April, as well as other works in the form of pots, sculptures and garden seats shown in the barns and beautiful garden setting of the pottery at South Heighton. Works are shown in conjunction with a special exhibition titled ‘Indigo Blue’ which pairs works by Ursula Mommens with various dyed fabrics collected from West Africa. Delicious home cooked food is also served by Rachael, will likely be the best you have ever tasted.
Directions to the exhibition can be found here.
Stoking the anagama, April 2025 - image A.Whittaker
Notes
[1] https://www.britannica.com/art/Chinese-pottery - accessed 12th May, 2025
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/03/ursula-mommens-obituary - accessed 12th May, 2025
[3] Cardew, Michael – Michael Cardew: a Pioneer Potter, An Autobiography, Oxford University Press, 1989, p25
[4] Ibid p26
[5] Yu Pei-Chin, Huang Lan-Yin, Chang Chin-Hsin - The Magic of Kneaded Clay – Ceramic Collection of the National Palace China, National Palace Museum, 2014 P13
[6] The site has three kilns to date and was set up in partnership with Japanese kiln builder TAKIKAWA Takuma (the 5th Living National Treasure of Bizen, Okayama, Japan) via support from Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and the Sasakawa Foundation.
[7] A letter written in Eightenth century Jingdezhen, China by Pere Francois Xavier d’Entrecolles (1664 – 1741) a French missionary working there at the time.
[fig 1] Mary Evans, Original publication: Country Life
[fig 2] https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/ursula-mommens-1908-2010-a-shallow-stoneware-dish-681-c-38b47e0b5e - accessed 12th May, 2025
[fig 3.] https://www.phillips.com/detail/michael-cardew/UK050321/42 accessed 12th May, 2025
[fig. 4] https://www.joannabird.com/artist/michael-cardew/ accessed 12th May, 2025
[fig. 5] https://www.tooveys.com/lots/356490/a-chris-lewis-studio-pottery-stoneware-vase/ accessed 3rd June, 2025