KIKO’S PAGE
In 1994, I left my last day job to try and make a living by art. I had no idea what that would look like, but a friend who taught anthropology invited me to a slide presentation by a guy who had worked with peasant craftspeople all over the world — mostly helping them to build better devices for cooking with wood. His name was Ianto Evans, and when he returned from his travels, he realized that the problems he was trying to solve were not in fact caused by poverty, but by the economic systems required to establish and maintain a wasteful, exploitative, profit-driven consumer society.
That spring, as part of a larger goal of de-consumerization, Ianto was teaching a workshop on how to build a mud house for next to nothing. So I gave him some of my shrinking funds and, with a wonderful group of folks, mixed mud to build a beautiful little cob cottage, as well as a wood-fired oven. That summer, I sculpted Minnesota and New York mud into a couple of ovens for family members. (In addition to giving me a wonderful medium for larger-than-life sculpture, the ovens also gave me the key to making the kind of truly wonderful bread I had eaten as a 12-year old guest on a rural French farm.) I sent Ianto pictures, and he invited me back for more mud work with more wonderful folks.
My vision of art up ’til then had been dominated by a love for stone carving — but I didn’t like the art world, which seemed frivolous, driven by ego and money rather than beauty and service. To me, beauty is what we live by, and cannot live without — like sunshine, grass, and water. The point of life is to participate in those gifts, and to give all we can to insure that they continue.
By another set of lovely coincidences, I had been invited to fix up a little cabin in the country where I could build an oven, bake my own bread, and learn to grow my own food. Eventually, I also built myself a little cob cottage there. Without being able to explain any of it, and mostly by what it was not, I knew that I would not truly be able to live by art unless I could I re-find a real, living connection to nature. The need to build a home and garden became my university; mud and ovens became the vehicle by which I could share what I learned.
Since then, I have been fortunate to meet and learn from many marvelous, brilliant, and inspiring teachers, all of whom live by a variety of arts. I have also discovered that my inchoate feelings about art and beauty constitute, in fact and in practice, what amounts to a universal cornerstone underlying all of culture. The literature is well known, but little taught. Ananda Coomaraswamy summarizes it well:
The basic error in what we have called the illusion of culture is the assumption that art is something to be done by a special kind of man, and particularly that kind of man whom we call a genius. In direct opposition to this is the normal and humane view that art is simply the right way of making things, whether symphonies or airplanes.
Manufacture is for use and not for profit. The artist is not a special kind of man, but every man who is not an artist in some field, every man without a vocation, is an idler. The kind of artist that a man should be, carpenter, painter, lawyer, farmer, or priest, is determined by his own nature…
This is not to say that any mere practice constitutes art, but that goals such as beauty, proportion, and harmony can be pursued in any vocation — so long as the vocation understands its purpose as defined by use and not profit. In other words, art cannot and does not serve self or wealth, but others.
UPDATE & September, 2022
After moving to town from a 20 year homestead next to a creek in a delicious little valley in the Oregon coast range, I spent three years building a new house. I finished in 2017. I was happy to be able to do other things again, including more spoons, bowls, perch stools (“buttspoons!”), grass rakes, coffins, ovens, writing, welcoming WWOOFers and/or intern/apprentice/volunteers. Then there were craft fairs, a folk school development project (ongoing), Covid, divorce, an oven at the Stone Barns Center, a boy in college, teaching, a mobile community pizza project, renovations, phew! Renovations will make space to expand the homestead to include more people so we can build up the garden, woodenwares, and other projects. Please get in touch (kikodenzer at gmail). It’s easier for me to post @kikodenzer and @earth.oven on IG, so for more up-to-date info, check out those accounts. And for perspective, outrage, and comfort, read The Death of the Artist, by Wm. Deresiewicz. And The Gift, by Lewis Hyde. Two poles that define some important points in our current dilemma.
Regular events where I teach and/or sell:
The Buckeye Gathering, near Chico, CA
Echoes-in-Time, near Monmouth, OR
Corvallis Winter Market
If you want wares, please get in touch.
I’ve been adding some things to the youtube channel.
Hello Kiko — Got my oven foundation up and then looked at pictures of other oven foundations and it seems a lot of people use mortar to fix their rocks in place. Right now my oven seems solid, no wobblies, and so on. BUT: Should I tear the thing down and build with mortar? Lots of wasted work if I do so. But if there is some technical problem that I am not familiar with, the whole things might collapse. Went through the FAQ section, but no one seems to be a worry wart besides me. Your thoughts?
Hey, Ken, just so’s you know, there are dry-stacked stone walls that have stood for hundreds (thousands?) of years, so…yes, you can do it w/out mortar. That said, I can’t tell what your foundation looks like, so I can’t really answer your question…except to say that if it is as solid as it seems (and you’re not overlooking anything critical), it could well be just fine. (Also, a mortared wall that’s badly built is going to have a shorter life than an unmortared wall built well…)
If you go ahead with it and see signs of movement or possible failure, you can always wrap it (with wire, metal fencing, chicken wire, lath, baling twine…) and apply stucco over the wrap to hold it all in place with a tension band/belt.
Wire is a great idea! But I think it’s going to be fine as it is. Thanks so so much!
Hi Kiko, thanks for being such an inspiration. I was just wondering: what is the biggest size oven that you would Think is possible to build in this way? Thank you!
Hi, Mich,
Good question. The bigger the oven, the flatter the arch. The flatter the arch, the greater the thrust force the ceiling will exert on the side walls. Big modern brick ovens are typically reinforced/contained by steel cages with horizontal elements that can contain the thrust. Theoretically, at least, I don’t see why you couldn’t use mud to build as big an oven as anything made of brick, tho you’d have to be a lot more careful about your mud mix and your fabrication techniques. That said, the biggest mud oven I’ve built was about 4′ wide by maybe 5′ deep (a restaurant oven that’s in the book and was called Maya by the baker). If you look around for pictures of traditional earthen buildings, you’ll find some pretty impressive vaults and domes — but they’re higher and more steeply angled — traits you don’t want in an oven. If you want a really good architectural story, look up Brunelleschi’s dome…
Thank you, I will Look up thOse references. Keep building!
amen! thanks.
This message if for Kiko. Kiko, i am looking for a bit more background on the recommended dimensions of the cob oven. For example, where did the rule, the top of the door should be 63% of the oven height, or the door width should be 50% of the oven diameter width? Do you have any idea where these and others came from? would love to find some discussions on this.
Hi, Peter, thanks for the question, it gives me an opportunity to sing the praises of (indexed!) books over the internet. Pages 57 and 114 of the “Cob Oven bible” go into in some detail, but the 63% came from Boily & Blanchette (The Bread Ovens of Quebec, 1979), who surveyed traditional Canadian clay ovens, measured the relationship between door height and drafting/smoking, and graphed their results. 63% was the winning number — roughly 2/3 (whole number ratios rule! but that’s another story…). Door width is more of a judgement call. The wider the door, the more thermal mass you give up, and the more you run into problems w/air flow and fire management. I generally advise folks that if they want a wider door, they should build their oven somewhat longer and deeper. There’s probably an optimal number in terms of door vs hearth areas, but I haven’t made the measurements. Commercial brick ovens may have multiple doors across the entire width of a very large oven, but as a percentage of floor area, the wide door is still proportionally small — in addition, three small doors can be opened sequentially to optimize heat (and steam) retention during loading. All science is based on empirical human experience — numbers merely reflect/record those experiences…. I get frustrated with the kind of thinking that equates numbers w/scientific “authority,” and forgets the necessity of asking, looking, thinking, counting…and then re-thinking and re-doing…
Hi Kiko,
i DON’T KNOW IF THIS PAGE IS ACTIVE ANYMORE…. BUT i THOUGHT i’D TRY. i BOUGHT YOUR eARTH oVEN BOOK A FEW YEARS AGO AND i’M ABOUT TO START BUILDING MY OVEN! i LIVE NEAR pORTLAND, or AND AM HAVING A HARD TIME FINDING WHERE TO BUY FIRE BRICKS FOR THE HEARTH FLOOR. i FIGURED SINCE YOU HAVE BEEN BUILDING OVENS IN oREGON FOR A WHILE YOU COULD SUGGEST A SUPPLIER AND BRICK. tHANKS!
Hey, Scott, I’d try harbison walker in Portland. Or Masons Supply, or Willamette Graystone. In that order.
Hi, Scott, Did I reply by email? If not, try Masonry Supply Co (MASCO) or harbison walker, both in Pdx. Willamette Graystone also sells firebrick. happy building and baking…
Hi Kiko,
I just got off the phone with our mutual friend David Hauer down in Oakland. I’m moving to Portland from Vashon Island in Washington in a month or so. Even though you live at the bottom of Oregon, as it were, David said you would likely have interesting contacts in the Portland area. Just a quick look at your page here tells me we have a lot in common, not to mention that I already own your cob oven book and have one cob oven/bench under my belt. It was an awesome success, just should have made the oven twice as big! That will be my next one.
Anyway, if you are open to a conversation re. contacts, please let me know. Aloha, Alan
Hi kinko I have a bakery here in goa India, I have been trying to build one of your Ovens the big one..
I’m having trouble finding good sand recently I went to a granite seller they have a lot of pieces that they just throw away. My question was could I somehow grind the granite and mix it with the sand for the fence oven mix.. Please help I have been stuck on this oven many months.. Thanks a million love your work. Ziggy Flourdust baker at FlourPower Bakeria Goa
Hi, Ziggy,
sorry for the slow reply. Are you wanting to replace clay w/ground granite? If so, well, I’ve never heard of it being done, and would not expect good results. That said, clay comes from decayed granite, so…maybe? I suspect grinding would be a LOT of work. If, however, you’re wanting to replace sand w/ground granite, then yes, absolutely. In fact, if you’re near a quarry where they manufacture gravel, they may have waste (fines) that would work very well in place of sand. Again, however, just grinding rock-sized chunks of granite into sand sounds like a lot of heavy labor. If you’re anywhere near a river, you should be able to find sand deposits on the banks or nearby. I hope this helps. Hard to assess materials via emailed descriptions…
Hi. I have built a 22″ clay oven using your book. We have cooked several delicious pizzas, calzones, apple galettes and baked sweet potatoes using it. I have not yet installed the insulation layer. I used 3:1 sand to dry powdered clay mix for the inner dense layer. The powered clay was purchased from a ceramic studio that also supplies clay to other studios for only $5 for 50 lbs.
However, I can not find straw or saw dust near us. I bought a bale of 50 lb compressed Timothy grass but later read that such dried grass/hay it not recommended for the insulation layer. I am now hesitant to use it. Is the problem with dried Timothy grass serious enough to be worth making a 120 mile round trip to purchase straw from the nearest feed shop advertising barley/wheat straw for erosion control?
eeesh. Yup, 120 miles is too far to go. The reason I don’t like long fiber for insulation is because it tends to bunch up and make pockets that are large enough to create a combustible situation when they get hot. That said, if it’s all you’ve got, I’d recommend chopping it up (about an 1″) before you mix in the clay slip. Shorter fibers will take a coat of clay easier and pack better, w/out bunching. (If you’re in the country and have access to any (fresh) horse or cow manure, that would also be a good addition.) Basically, any organic matter that can be turned into smallish particles will work. When mixed with clay, it should make a sticky, doughy, packable material. Whatever you use, I do recommend making a small test ball and putting it in a fire for at least an hour to burn out all the organic matter. It should have enough clay to make a reasonably solid foam (i.e., after firing, it shouldn’t fall apart in your hand, tho it will crush easily).
Kiko –
I built an earth oven several years ago using your book as a guide. The results were great! I’ve fired a LOT of pizzas over the years to the delight of family and friends. A wood-fired pizza is a taste revelation and it’s great fun to watch them finish in about 90 seconds when the oven is super hot. I now have a few cracks in the oven that require repair. I attempted to schmear on more mud last year, but I didn’t get good adhesion. What is the best way to get additional mud to adhere? Thanks for your help! By the way, my oven and your book has inspired others. I plan to help a neighbor build one this summer.
Hi, Glen, if the cracks aren’t actually leaking smoke, you probably don’t have a lot to worry about. It also depends on whether you insulated your oven or not. In an uninsulated oven, cracks can be widened a bit w/any kind of scratchy/scrapey tool and filled, preferably with a fine-grained mix (mason’s sand, clay w/out big lumps). If the oven is insulated, you might want to remove the outer shell and inspect the insulation prior to re-plastering. Insulation can be filled/fixed/replaced.
One way I’ve dealt with cracking is to isolate the insulation from the dense inner layer so that when the oven material expands, it doesn’t push on the outer layers. This insures that cracks won’t pass thru to the exterior. The process is as follows: after the dense layer is complete, cut strips of cardboard into long triangles. Dampen them until they’re flexible enough to lay over the outside of the dome. Use enough so that when the cardboard burns out, you’ll have a gap of 1/8th to 1/4 inch. Apply insulation over the cardboard, and finish plaster over the insulation.
I hope this helps; let me know how it goes.
Just found out this site by searching my surname (Denzer)
Cool to know people around the world with the same surname.
Best regards from a Denzer from Brazil.
Hi Kiko, I just wanted to say a big thank you for the inspiration and clear instruction from your “Build Your Own Earth Oven” book. I would love to share some photo’s of my finished oven with you, so what’s the best way for me to do that? All the best
Bjorn, thanks for the note. You can send photos to handprint at cmug dot com. I’ll look forward to seeing your oven.
Hi Kiko, Thanks for the great book “Build your Own Earth Oven”. I’m in New Mexico where I get 8″ of rain so I’m building an uncovered Horno. I have some old broken stabilized adobe bricks (something like 1 to 3% asphalt). Can I soak those down, sift them and use the fine leftovers as a clay slip on the horno when I’m done? I’m thinking it would make replastering every 3 or 4 years instead of every year but your book mentions the need for ovens to breath. Will the small amount of asphalt ‘breath-back” into the oven through the insulation and cob?
Hi, Donald, thanks for the note. I haven’t worked much w/asphalt emulsion, but I suspect you’d be fine using it for a finish plaster. My understanding is that the small percentage of asphalt just increases resistance to water rather than effecting a complete waterproofing. And assuming your insulation is thick enough to prevent the exterior from getting hot, heat should not be an issue. Is it common practice to re-use old stabilized adobes? I’m not sure what happens to the asphalt once it dries… I would not want it any where close to heat, however, as I suspect burning asphalt would not only smell horrible, but also potentially taint anything you might cook in the oven.
I’d like to be on mailing list to know when you’ll be in Neb, Col area. I’d like to attend your spoon carve with my son.
Hi, Fernando, it might be a while before I get to your area. Meanwhile, however, there are a lot of resources out there. Willie Sundqvist’s book is perhaps the classic one; Barn the Spoon just put one out that’s also good; there are more. They’ll all come up on Amazon. And there are LOTS of videos on youtube, some traditional and some new. (I really like Stuart King’s videos, from before the current craze.) There’s a Facebook group that I don’t know much about. But Barn the Spoon’s Greenwood Guild in London has just started a subscription series of carving videos that might be the best place to spend money if you can’t find someone to whittle with. Best wishes from here.
Hello! I’m interested in making an oven! I did a search to find clay, but no luck finding any to dig or buy. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated! Tim from Massachusetts
to find clay you just need to look under your feet. MA is rich in clay. Construction sites, backyard holes, road cuts — all the old brick buildings in Boston are made from local clay — it’s everywhere. There are a lot of books that will help you recognize it, and I won’t repeat what I wrote in Build Your Own Earth Oven, but I hope you’re able to get out and look. Just pick up pinches of dirt wherever you go — wet it out (spit works well), and see what it feels like. If you decide to buy it from a ceramic or building supplier (ask for fireclay), fine, but it all comes from underfoot. One author (Wm. Bryant Logan) says if we took all the clay on the planet and spread it out evenly, it would cover the earth a mile thick! A Google “search” won’t work (unless you’re looking for your friendly neighborhood masonry or ceramic supplier — but you’ll learn so much more if you use your own eyes and hands. In fact, visiting my brother in Cambridge awhile back, I talked to the guys who were tearing up Huron Ave to work on the sewer system. Their hole was full of beautiful, pure gray clay. You could have made pots with it. I wasn’t building anything at the time, but I’ve often gotten buckets or truckloads of great material from construction crews, many of whom are really interested to hear about what I’m using it for…)
Hi Kiko
I’m currently making an earth oven. I had a photocopy of your book for years then this year I decided to actually get on with making the oven and couldn’t find the copy but my local library kindly bought a copy for me and eventually for other library users. As well as your book I have watched dozens of YouTube videos and decided to make the thermal layer from a clay/sand mix with an insulation layer of compressed mineral fibre (ROXUL) with chicken wire and stucco on top. I’ve been documenting progress in a PowerPoint and would send it to you if I had an email address. Anyway, what are your thoughts on the stucco? I notice your father used stucco and it wasn’t successful so I am anxious to not make a major mistake.
Thanks from Canada
David
If I was going to stucco an earthen oven, I’d leave a generous (3-6″) air gap between the insulation and exterior cladding — cement stucco, brick, etc. I would also vent the cladding, so moist air could get out, as well as providing a pathway for condensation to escape w/out saturating the earthen material. Moisture will condense when it hits the dew point — which could saturate your oven mass and possibly collapse it. I have seen it happen.
Thanks for your thoughts Kiko. Though worrying and a bit late now as I’m almost at the stuccoing stage. I am including 5 vents to allow any water vapour to escape from the insulation that is between the thermal layer and the stucco layer. I hope it doesn’t collapse but I guess time will tell. If it does collapse I will probably re-build with fire bricks instead of clay/sand, though I admit this defeats the object of having an ‘earthen’ oven. I am documenting progress with a PowerPoint and have tried to email you an earlier version. Did you get it?
I’m looking forward to my first batch of bread to come out of my oven.
Thanks again – David
I’m working on gathering materials to build one of your mud ovens! One thing I can’t get though is bricks. I can’t find any information about making a mud oven with a mud floor. Is it possible? I thought about making my own bricks, but test bricks weren’t turning out well. Basically falling apart. Would it be detrimental to build the floor out of mud as well? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Hey, Geoff; I haven’t tried the mud floor, but in principle, it should work. Typically, bricks are fired at a higher temperature than you’ll get in your mud oven, but adding ash to the clay as a flux may lower the temperature at which the clay vitrifies — not sure just how much — too much will probably not help. The next step might be to build a little kiln and fire your bricks hotter, then install them in your oven. I have heard of earthen ovens that used pebble or stone floors — they baked flatbreads on the pebble floors, leaving buyers to pick out any pebbles that might adhere to the bread. Soapstone is an option, but typically makes a much hotter floor than brick. There may be other stones you could use, but exercise caution, as some rock will explode in high heat. Please do let us know how it goes!
Thanks for the reply. Almost all the stones we have around here (a rugged mountainous region of Papua New Guinea) explode when heated! It’s a white chalky stuff. We have nice clay though! I could probably get some river rocks, but I’d think I’d need to have something in between them.
So if I were to use clay/sand for the floor, you’d recommend making bricks of them first? Would there be a problem just building up the floor as a solid mass of clay/sand?
I’ll definitely have to experiment with the ash! Hopefully that will help.
building up a solid mass of sand/clay mix and firing it will produce a soft brick. The hotter you fire it, the more it will shrink and crack and the harder it will get (until it melts, but I doubt you’ll get that hot). The difficulty of firing large objects in clay is one of the reasons why bricks are the size they are.
So I was finally able to make, dry, and fire my bricks. I used 5 parts clay, 4 parts sand, and 1 part wood ash. Used the thrown clay wedge method in a mold to make 30 bricks. Dried them for about a month. Then fired in a one time use updraft type kiln I made from a fuel drum, covered with earth. They actually turned out OK! Would show pics, but don’t see a way to do that here.
very cool to read your report (below; some day I might figure out a way for you to post pix.) Is the ash the only difference between these and your previous bricks? Or was the kiln hotter? Or both? Let us know how they work in your oven…
Looks interesting. Outside of Penticton, B.C, Can, there is an old abandoned railway right of way. It’s now a walking path. Every few thousand yards or whatever, you can still see the stone ovens used by the Chinese cooks for the railway construction workers. The ovens are all probably still useable, and had a shelf that the cookee used to bake their bread etc on! Just thought u might like 2 know! g
Yes, I’ve heard of those ovens, also in WA state — haven’t seen ’em yet. Got pix?
Probably built and used by European laborers [ed. note: original link didn’t work, but I found another one referencing the following article.]
http://webpages.uidaho.edu/aacc/rock_ovens.pdf