06/16/2026
Please share! This is an invaluable resource that we will be losing. Hopefully, we as potters, will be able to make a difference and save the work that Tony Hansen has created over the last 35 years.
The Digital Fire website that many of you have probably used is having to close on June the 26th, for reasons outside of Tony Hansen's control.
The Insight site and glaze tools are unaffected.
He's asking people to post about this, both so that everyone is aware of what is happening, and also perhaps with enough support those responsible for forcing the closure will have a change of heart.
For me, it was the discovery of his site and his (then Windows based) glaze software that got me interested in the technical side of ceramics, without which I would have probably dropped it years ago.
He has built up an invaluable repository of technical information over the years, something that is becoming ever harder to acquire, with ceramics teaching, books and other sources treating it as an art whereas it is a deeply technical craft (I've heard rumours that one of the major glaze manufacturers is working on a painting by numbers kit).
So please repost this, or post something about what a contribution Digital Fire has made to ceramics, and how important it is that it is maintained, both to you personally and for ceramics as a whole.
In the meantime, you'll find the Internet Archive have a full copy of the site, but a year or so old. The volunteers at http://archiveteam.org/ , who make copies of important sites that are closing, have said that they'll do another full copy before it closes.
I'm also looking into how best to make a copy of the site as a set of web pages, to hand over to Tony or to host as a public resource. This will preserve the content, but things like the search facility won't be working, and will need to be recreated. And it isn't an insignificant task, there are over 10000 web pages to process. But I'm just starting on this today, and don't yet know how feasible it is, so no promises. If any software engineers/web developers out there want to give me a hand, give me a shout.