Hello everyone.
I have finally had time to write a blog post on the results of our Raku firing, and if you follow our social media/s, you will know the results were excellent!
As you may know, if you read our previous post on raku firing, we were going to Montsalvat’s Clay Talk in Eltham to do a “raku firing workshop” course in late December. We also made custom raku pieces to take to Montsalvat.
I made some raku platters, and the family made some thrown and handmade vases, moon vases and some small dishes.
We decorated the pieces with horse hair, our own hair and some chicken feathers. Also we decorated some pieces with Montsalvat’s beautiful raku glazes available on the day.
We were there with a few other people doing raku, some with experience in raku and the results of the whole class were extraordinary.
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Well, as for our experience, the results speak for themselves, the moon vases came out looking perfect, with a beautiful design to the vase decorated with various feathers and horse hair.
Here you can also see a beautiful little dish decorated with a white raku crackle glaze with a carbonated base.
Another lovely bowl decorated with a green/purple raku glaze. Unfortunately, the bowl cracked due to thermal shock when it was cooling down, but it still produced a beautiful glaze colour and an excellent example for future pots.
Here is another Beautiful moon vase, rimless and decorated with feathers (including the local fallen duck feathers) and horse hair.
This is another bowl decorated with horse hair and feathers, but also, unfortunately, like the other bowl, the extreme temperatures of the raku firing cracked the bowl in a few places.
Here is a platter (flatware) that came out fantastically, especially considering after firing the piece, the kiln technician said that flatware is the riskiest piece as they struggle to survive the thermal shock due to its flat nature. So as you can imagine, I was thrilled when it came out in one piece out of the raku firing.
Overall though, as you can see, it was a raging success, and we hope to go and do a raku firing again soon!
Let us know in the comments your thoughts on the pieces and if you have done raku firing how you went for your first time!
You can also view some of our videos we make on TikTok on our first raku firing.
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Thanks for reading, and we will catch you in the next blog!