Art students at Bedford High School not only made pots like Native Americans, they also fired them in a homemade kiln the same way Pueblo potters did hundreds of years ago.

On Oct. 29, Bedford High art teacher Jim Pingree woke up at 6 a.m. to drive to the high school and start a fire for hot coals.

At 7 a.m., students placed the pots near the edge of the fire and warmed them to the point where they were too hot to touch.

By 9 a.m., Pingree, art teacher Catherine Tuttle and the students were ready to make their homemade kiln.

Students then fired their pots inside the fire on an iron grate placed over the hot coals below. Dried cow manure and sawdust were then loaded onto the pots and pieces of aluminum were placed around the fire in a beehive shape to keep the heat in.

“I really didn’t expect this for an art project,” said 10thgrader Kyle Latulippe, who helped load the cow manure onto the fire. “I didn’t think it was possible to fire pots with a real fire.”

Pingree said the goal is for the fire to reach 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit over the hour-long cooking time.

As students waited for their pots to cook, they snacked on marshmallows, chocolate and graham crackers and s’mores.

Once the pottery was ready, wood fire ashes were dumped onto the fire for a specific purpose.

“We hope adding the wood ashes creates a reduction fire, which helps place carbon into the pots giving them the look we want,” said Tuttle, who was excited at the authenticity of the project. “This is exactly how Native Americans would have cooked their pots on the top of the mesa.”

In August, Tuttle collected and dried the fuel and manure from the cows at Tuttle’s family’s farm in Contoocook.

Pingree and Tuttle worked mainly with Andy Roy from the school administration office on the fire pit design – after researching the outdoor firing methods of San Ildefonso Pueblo potters.

Construction began in early October. Roy engineered the fire pit, including setting the granite blocks and welding the grill for the pots.

Both Tuttle and Pingree were happy with how the project turned out.

“This is our first time doing this project but seeing how it went, it won’t be the last,” said Tuttle.