The process of Raku firing is without doubt one of my favourites. Unlike other forms of firing with glazes, this is a very quick process. All of the pots in this project were fired in one day- This quick turnaround was incredibly exciting. Raku can be a very temperamental process as was the case here. Due to the fact that the process requires very rapid cooling, which creates massive internal stresses in ceramic materials. In short less than 50% of the pots that went into the kiln came out in one piece, the rest exploded, destroyed beyond all recognition!

 

Essentially, each individual piece was heated up to roughly 1000 degrees C in a small outdoor kiln built from fire bricks. Once up to temperature, the pieces were removed from the kiln whilst glowing red hot, before being dropped into a large container full of sawdust. The sawdust ignited instantly, causing some very interesting effects on the glazes used (especially copper glaze, resulting in a rainbow spectrum effect) after a decided length of time, the pots were removed from the sawdust and being plunged into cold water.

 

Effects can be created through raku firing that no other process can achieve, but the final appearance of the pot is very hard to control. Much of the colour is determined by nature, things like the direction the flames move in once the pots have been placed in sawdust. More often then not, when a pot did survive the process, the colours and textures left by nature were incredible.

 

All of the pots produced were made very quickly by hand, to give an intentional rough hand made look. In some cases this roughness has been furthered by parts cracking and exploding...

 

I think it's incredible to see what nature can do if you let it.

 

(All photos have been taken with pots placed on a mirror to give a more complete view of each piece, where different glazes have been used on opposing faces)