Raku in the Making              

As I haven’t had the chance to do Raku before Mark gave me the chance to have a go at and it was great. 

The technique which I learnt through this process was slab building and how to do pinch pots. With the slab building I learnt that if you measure the slab out correctly then they would all fit together nicely and look good.

So the first thing I did was to make the slab long and thin and then had to leave it to go leather hard before I could do any work to it. Once the clay was leather hard I started the measuring and cutting, I used a T – square as this gave me straight lines and edges. Then I constructed the pieces together starting with the longer sides and then the smaller sides. Once it was all together I started to add surface pattern on to the pieces.

With having 3 slab built pieces and then 10 pinch pots all bisque fired then it was time to have the Raku Firing Celebration. As Raku Firing is a celebration my family and Marks family all got together and then got everyone involved in the glazing part.

With the Raku kiln being fired up and hot enough for the pieces to be put in the excitement started. My roll at first was to put the straw, hay and sawdust into the metal bucket where the red hot pieces were being put in and flames started to appear. Once the pieces where cool enough we got them out and scrubbed the burnt hay, straw and sawdust of them and left them to cool. The second firing I got to take the pieces out of the Raku kiln with metal tongs this was enjoyable. The last firing was eventful! 
Over all the experience was amazing as I have never done this type of firing before. In the near future I hope to do this type of firing again when I get my own studio as I will hopefully have the space. 

 Below are a few images of how I made my Raku pieces.