I'm just the right size, too 12 cubic feet! That's because my frame is made of half as many insulating brick as other gas kilns of the same size. You see, I'm wrapped in a cozy ceramic fiber blanket and boy, does that make a difference in the time and labor it takes to put me together. I use half as many bricks as normally required!

More important, my blanket allows me to fire up right past cone 10 at 2300 degrees and beyond!

I can also go into a smoke funk, which will make a copper glaze change to yummy reds without losing my heat rise. That's because I have two stacks which allow me to be controlled with dampers, from front to rear. My entire chamber guides flames to pass right through me and out my stacks. Each stack has a damper that allows you to really control how I'm smokin'!

Now I'm going to tell you about my curves. Would you guess that I don't need any buttresses, steel framing, or tie rod supports of any kind? That's because of my family roots. Catenary. You can find my name in several of the world's greatest books; Webster's Dictionary, for one. May I quote? "Catenary : The curve formed by a perfectly flexible, uniformly dense and thick, in extendable cable suspended from two fixed points." My great ancestor was Galileo! He gave birth to the first catenary when he was hit on the head by a falling apple and cried, "Eureka! It must be gravity!"

Get this! My curve will thrust all my weight, from keystone crown to base, without and additional metal supports. When I get a hot flash, and flames are flying beneath my lowest shelves, they go up my inner walls, by-pass my flue openings on the first turn, and swirl back down through all the ware inside me. That's when I blow my stacks! Yahoo!

So, that's it! that's the story of how I'll go up in flames for you. And don't forget, I'm totally self supporting!

-Caterina Catenary