Sunday, August 24, 2008

Give Me That Hot Stuff

Raku Firing is probably one of my top 10 favorite things to do. For those who don't know raku is a low firing pottery. You use low fire Clay and Glazes. You place your bisque fired and glazed pieces in the the kiln and light her up! It takes about 30-45 minutes to fire. Then you take the pieces out and place them in a trashcan. (As you can see in the two pictures below.) You let them reduce in the trashcans which are filled with sawdust, pine needles, newspaper and straw. Wait about an hour and remove them. You let them cool and then clean them off.


In my opinion the pieces turn out amazing eveytime. You never know what they will look like! For example the piece below was supposed to be WHITE. It is more amber than white!



And sometimes you get these beautiful copper pieces!


This is our Raku Firing Crew. Me, Walter and Brian.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is so cool, Maggie! - Ashley

Emma Joersz said...

so fun! I want to come do one! how's my puppy friend?

Lacey said...

That looks great - I love the "learn" urn. hehe. Did you know I tried Raku once? I felt so cool knowing what you were talking about!! - I want to get Riley up there so she can take a pottery class with you!

Abbey said...

that is wicked awesome