Raku Fire

One of my favorite (and least favorite) things about ceramics is that you never know what is going to come out of the kiln! And Specialty Fires are simply exciting to experience. This past week, Myself and three other students were able to Raku some of our pieces. This was the first time our professor wasn't present for the firing and it was a little nerve racking to see if we did the process right.

Raku is an ancient glazing technique (^^see link above^^) where you heat up the kiln until the pots are red hot...meaning that they are literally glowing red! At around 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit you could say these pots are pretty hot. They are then removed from the kiln (while glowing) and placed in metal trash cans filled with combustible material. They are then removed (about 15 minutes later) from the trashcans and dipped in water to cool. 

The glaze in this process become metallic because of both the rapid cooling and the reduction (no oxygen) happening in the trash cans. Any clay body that is not glazed becomes black. We used two different base glazes for this firing. The first is a white crackle glaze that looks like your smart phone when you smash it on the ground with cracks spider-webbing across the surface. The second was a copper based glaze that creates a beautiful metallic rainbow effect. 

I was lucky enough to get two beautiful pieces from the kiln. I had a very happy accident on my vase where the white dripped down into the copper in perfectly spaced drips. It is beautiful and is probably one of my best pieces to date!