electric mist

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.

Raku pottery

Carl, in his spare time (which is rare lately), does Raku pottery. I'm very proud of his work. Here's a bowl he did a few years ago. And here's a lidded pot with the carved leaf handles I did for him.

He's had people tell him he should be showing in galleries. We usually end up giving the pieces to friends or family for special events -- rarely does anything hang around here long enough to be earmarked for a gallery, though I'd like to be able to help him start showing soon. We'd even toyed with the idea of opening a sort of internet shop, though each piece is one-of-a-kind.

For those of you who aren't familiar with Raku pottery, it's made of a clay body that has a heavier grog content -- it's much stronger than, say, porcelain. The glazes are specific to Raku firings. A piece is thrown, then bisqued, then glazed with the Raku glaze. It's best to let the glaze dry at least a day, and the glazes seem to fire better when the temperatures outside are cooler.

Because the firing is the interesting part -- the pot is brought to about 1650 or 1700 degrees in a Raku kiln, then at the height of that heat, when it's clear the glaze has melted out evenly, the pot is removed (using tongs and heavy gloves) and placed in a container (such as a metal trash can) that is filled with combustible material (newspaper or sawdust are our favorites). The pot catches on fire and we let it burn for a minute or two, depending on the glaze, then cover it, starving the fire of the oxygen. Also, depending on the glaze, we may open the lid again, "burping" it -- allowing oxygen to rush in and cause the flame to re-ignite, then snuff it out again. This process causes the glazes to oxidze (and hence creating one-of-a-kind effects). Also, there are times we'll pull it out after just a few minutes and spray it with cold water, which stops the oxidation at that exact point -- it's a way to control more of what you get, although "control" is a bit of an over-statement, since you have to sort of know what that glaze will do with the cold water. Even then, it's unpredictable.

I have to run take both sons to the doctor now (both with different kinds of allergic reactions today! Weird!)... but I'll dig up some firing photos later and post just to show the firing process, if anyone's interested.