Description
A raku fired bowl, hand made from crank clay and decorated with organic and metallic marks and colours.
Half hidden in the glaze is this line from a poem by Chris Goan –
if not for hope
It is 9cm deep and 12cm in diameter.
This is a shiny metallic gem! Like all raku bowls, you never quite know what will happen in the making, but in this case, some magic occurred.
This bowl was made by roughly shaping the clay, then painting the outside with slip. Next, the slip covered surface was deeply scored with a knife, before being painted with sodium silicate (also known as water glass.) This helps the surface of the clay to form interesting cracks, which were encouraged further by teasing open the form by pressing from the inside. The pot is then air dried, before having a first firing in the electric kiln. It survived this intact – so far so good.
The next stage of the making involves glazing the pot, with our own glazes made from raw materials. On the outside, we used a glaze with a lot of metallic content, whilst on the inside, a white crackle glaze was added. Next, the raku kiln!
Raku (meaning ‘easy’ in Japanese) is a process by which a pot is heated quickly to around 1000 degrees using a gas burner, then placed in a reduction bin – a sealed metal bin containing combustible material. By controlling the amount of oxygen reaching the glazes, the potter can produce a range of different colours, although much of this is also down to chance!
This pot was left for a long period in the oxygen depleted reduction bin, before being taken out and cleaned. It is only then that the potter knows what they have! Finally the pot is sealed with wax to keep in as much of the fragile raku detail as possible.
NB- raku pots, as they are fired to lower temperatures, are not food safe, or guaranteed to be water tight.
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