New Raku

Freshly fired. Some of the first raku pieces I've done in a long darn time. Look for much more to come. Raku is a most spontaneous and immediate firing technique. The piece is fired to approximately 1800 degrees F, then placed in a sealed container with combustibles. The process of burning requires oxygen, therefore, since the chamber is sealed, the fire extracts the oxygen from the metal oxides we use to give color to glazes, changing their colors. One of the things I most enjoy about pottery and ceramics in general, besides aesthetics, is the chemistry.

Green raku vase -

Here it is sitting on the kiln shelf, cooling down a little bit before I pick it up with tongs and place it in a container full of old newspaper for a post-firing reduction atmosphere, mostly to help darken the crackles that occur in this glaze.

A lidded jar with a white crackle glaze. The black/gray part is bare clay that's been impregnated with carbon from the smoke in the reduction chamber. The slight bit of color around the base and top of the knob comes from a copper glaze/patina  mixture.

Here's the jar in the earlier wet clay stage -