February 24, 2004
more Raku
I know I have taken a zillion Raku photos, but I have no idea where I filed most of them. I dug up a few:
We have a huge party every year on New Year's Day -- and most of the time, we raku. I end up standing farther away so everyone else can see, and I end up not getting a good photo of Carl pulling the pot from the kiln. Here's a tiny (bad) angle where you can see how glowing red from the 1700 heat.
Carl has just placed the pot in the trash can here. We've used shredded newspapers and magazines for combustible materials. The fire can flame up a couple of feet, but then it dies down to lower than the top of the can. We'll let this burn for a minute or so:
I didn't have one this year of us putting the lid on -- smoke will rush from the outer rim of the lid, but no fire escapes unless Carl re-opens the lid. This shot is after Carl has pulled both pieces out of the trash cans. We opted to stop this glaze with water because we'd actually brought the glazes up a notch too high -- I think we took them to 1700, and we should have taken the pots out at 1650 -- that 50 degree difference affects the colors the glaze turns. In this case, had we not taken the pots from the trash cans and stopped the oxidation process, the colors would have turned all the way to a silver / gunmetal color. By stopping it at the point we did, we got these beautiful plum colors. I wish I had a close up shot of the pot, because they were gorgeous:
And here's one he did recently, which is a red raku glaze. The quality of this photo isn't great -- it was just a quickie to show a friend. We have a "photo box" we constructed to get better lighting, but I didn't set it up for this:
I hope he gets a chance to get back to it soon.
Wow!!! that is a great red glaze you have there.
do you share recipes? I have an awsome black that has some fantastic color flashings in it from a very dark copper to a dark blue. Your work is great, wish I had a way to post my photos. I am a member of an organization that has a web site....
muddyriverarts.org my photo is not in it but these are all a lot of friends of mine.
keep up the great work and good luck JP
Thanks so much, JP -- it's my husband who does most of the work, I just do the glazing. That red is, believe it or not, a sort of new pre-mixed glaze. I'll try to find out the name of it (I'm not where I can see it today) and write you back. And yes, we love to share glaze recipes! Half the fun of the whole pottery / Raku thing is the great people you meet. I've found more really cool people through pottery than just about anything else.
We used to do our own recipe for red, but this one comes out consistently beautiful. We've also found an amazing copper. We have others that are mixed by recipe... a terrific turquoise-ish / greenish one that usually ends up with some copper in it during reduction which is also a favorite. I'm not sure where that recipe is, but if I can find it, I'll send it.
(JP -- the e-mail address you posted here bounced... e-mail me at toni [at] electricmist [dot] com and I'll send you those recipes tomorrow or Friday.)
Posted by: toni at November 23, 2004 09:42 AM