Mae Ishida started Quiet Kiln in 2018, in a single-car garage off Division Street that still serves as the studio. Before clay, she spent eleven years as a structural engineer — bridges, mostly, in Osaka and later Sacramento. She will tell you the two disciplines are not as different as they seem: load, material, gravity, time.
The kiln is a 60-cubic-foot downdraft she built from salvaged firebrick over three weekends in August 2019 with help from her neighbour, Tom Worrell, who is a retired mason and who insists on being credited. It fires to Cone 10 — roughly 1,300°C — using propane for the first eight hours and then wood offcuts from a furniture maker on Foster Road for the final six. The ash from the wood settles on the pieces during firing. That is the glaze.
She makes four things. She has considered making more and has decided, each time, against it. "I would rather understand four forms completely than approximate twelve." Each piece is thrown or pinched from Hawthorn Bond, a brown stoneware body she orders from a supplier in Sheffield, England, because she has not found an American equivalent she trusts. The clay arrives in 25kg boxes. She uses roughly one box per firing.
Quiet Kiln fires six times a year — roughly every eight weeks, weather permitting. Each firing produces between 35 and 50 pieces. There is no website shop. Pieces are sold through three stockists and occasionally from the garage itself, if you email and happen to be nearby.
"I like that it's slow. I like that it's small. I do not need it to be otherwise."