Alan Watt has been a ceramic artist for 45 years & was for 20 years head of the Ceramics Department of the National Institute of Arts at the Australian National University. Since retiring he has over the past six years conducted numerous weekend workshops on how to build your own wood fired oven. This convinced him that there is a broad & growing interest in learning how to make & use a pizza or wood fired oven. So he has written this book to show how its done & illustrated it with many excellent colour photographs & line drawings. His book explains the historical development of ovens & the physics & basic principles of oven design. There are sections on oven bases & different types of ovens ranging from low tech to high tech & the traditional brick dome oven. Then follow sections on chimneys & dampers casting a chimney & doors & doorways. There are appendixes on casting an arch Forming a brick arch without traditional formwork & casting a chimney base. Finally theres a section of recipes with photographs of dishes which display the diversity of wood fired ovens.