RAKU!

I am so excited! My friend and colleague Katrine taught me how to raku-fire pottery today. It´s something I´ve been wanting to learn for ages. And finally we found a day when we could get it done. Lucky for me, Katrine also took some photos, so now I can show you at least part of the process. First thing´s first. The pottery I actually made months ago, and Katrine did the first raw-fire quite a while back too. So today started with putting glaze on the pieces. This clay is a very rough clay, half of it is sand (chamotte), which makes it very sturdy. Something it needs to survive the quick temperature-changes. We also use a special glaze for the rake-clay. And finally we are ready to go:

This would be the before-picure 😉

Katrine checking the oven. which can be made relatively easy from an old water-tank…

The oven is heated with propane, and it takes only about half an hour. There´s a peaking-hole in the lid, and when you can see that the glaze is starting to melt, it´s time to turn off the gas, remove the lid, and take the pieces out.

First stop is a pile of sawdust. By leaving the piece in the air, the glaze cracks up. The longer you leave it, the more cracks. But you don´t want to leave it too long either, before burying it. The heat of the pottery ignites the sawdust, and you wrap it around the piece. This way you´ll choke the flames, and the sawdust will charcoal right into the pottery and make it black.

After a while, say 10 minutes, I dig the pieces out again, and put them into water.

I can´t believe nothing cracked! It goes directly from 960 degrees in the oven to 15 degrees in the air.

Into the water. Making it almost boil….

The color doesn´t look like much. Dusty pink. But just you wait and see 😉

Scraping off the charcoal outside before taking it all inside again to give it a thorough round with a brush.

And voilá! Aren´t they cute?! The quick temperature-changes makes the glaze all metallic.