LINCOLNTON – Known locally for his wood-fired pizzas sold at Good Wood Pizza in Lincolnton, Brian Rollins has a passion for dough, brick, and pottery. They are indeed related, at least as far as Rollins is concerned.
It all started while on a trip to Tahiti. Rollins saw a brick pizza oven that he really liked and decided to make one at his home. It took him nearly two years to make it. He now constructs and sells wood-fired brick ovens. He built the oven he uses at Good Wood, which has cooked more than 200,000 pizzas since the restaurant opened almost five years ago. To date, Rollins has built 61 brick pizza ovens.
Rollins and his wife, Jane, have been supporters of local potters for years. When a local potter, Mike Ball, was gifted a groundhog kiln built by Michel Bayne, the kiln was transported, brick by brick, to the Rollins’ property. Over the past three years, with the help of friends and local potters, including Ball, Kim Ellington and Ben North, Rollins reconstructed the kiln. It’s modified from how Bayne originally built it. It’s smaller and can be loaded standing up. To load some groundhog kilns, the potters must crawl in.
“You can walk into the alleyway and put the pots up on the edges,” Rollins said. “It’s all standing work. Crawling in is hard for us old people.”
The kiln is now a community kiln and likely the only operating groundhog kiln in Lincoln County. It’s only available for use by trained wood-fired potters. Rollins hopes that it can be used to train others in the wood-fired process.
“Firing this thing is not a two-person operation,” he said. “When they were firing it the first time, there were five people feeding wood. It is a dangerous thing and a lot of responsibility for us. The potters need to know what they’re doing.”
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