Bonfiring

Most women's traditions involve open firing such as bonfiring, pitfiring, or a fire surrounded by a low wall. More unusually, in Cyprus, Colombia and the Canaries individual potters have their own kilns.

Bonfiring has a very direct contact between the pottery and the flame. Firing time is usually quite short and the pots are carefully supervised through the process. Bonfiring, in general, does not create the same amount of wasters as kiln firing […]

[…]while open bonfiring was practiced mainly by women and universally used in African traditions where it has a very low failure rate. It has been characterized as technically simple though in fact it requires a hyper refined combination of specific clay body, fuel, firing technique and atmospheric conditions - formulas derived from local experimentation mainly by generations of women.