Sandy Lang led another great RAKU pottery workshop in the cobblestone courtyard just outside of the wonderful Columbus Cultural Arts Center. Her husband, Walter, was her co-pilot in RAKU and they make quite a great team if I do say so myself. RAKU pottery involves a lot of fire. It starts with putting your RAKU clay pottery pieces that have been fired once in a traditional kiln through the glazing process where you add the colors. Then all the RAKU pieces are placed in a loud propane-fueled portable outdoor kiln and fired to melt the glazes. My guess is the firing goes to about 1,830 degrees, and that is a guess.
It does manage to get so hot that the pottery begins GLOWING a bright orange red color. Next comes the major fire hazard risks. Right before Walter and Sandy pull the kiln up and off of the pottery using welding masks to protect their eyes, kevlar gloves to protect your hands, we begin to get a glimpse of the strange orangy red hot glowing pottery. Just before they unveil the entire kiln load of glowing pots, Walter says loudly something to the effect of, “If anyone catches on fire, just move far away from the kiln and douse yourself with water. There are plenty of water buckets everywhere and a hose as well. Just don’t splash or spray water on the kiln or everyone else may be on fire as well.” Suddenly it was clear to me that we really were about to play with fire. Thankfully, no one caught on fire, at least not for very long. What happens to cause such a potential fire hazard involves pulling those orange-red glowing hot pots out of the kiln area using long metal tongs and then placing them into big metal trashcans full of “combustibles” which for us included primarily hay, some newspapers, and a little sawdust. Once that orange-red glowing hot pottery hits that compustible material, it causes a huge fire inside the trashcan. Occasionally the fires will sneak out of the trash cans and rise up and out up to 6 or so feet, where you hope none of your body is too close! We alternate having the lid on the metal garbage cans to smoke the pottery and having them off to restart the fire. During this process, the smoke swirls around each piece of pottery encouraging the glaze colors to flux and change and become unique and original pieces of art.
The smoke really helps the glaze colors to become alive and to look so unique for each piece. Some people, like my husband Nick, chose to decorate their RAKU by burning horse hair into the surface. For the “horse hair people,” we did not place their pottery into a compustible materials bin. Instead, they each got a metal trash can lid with a pile of sawdust in the middle. When their pottery was being pulled out of the kiln area glowing orange-red hot, it was placed right on top of that sawdust pile in the metal lid. Next, we waited a couple minutes, occasionally checking the readiness by placing a horse hair on the pottery. Soon it was ready and the horse hair being placed would begin to leave a very thin, very black line on the white
surface. It looks to
me like a reverse image of lightening. The sawdust underneath, of course, catches on fire almost immediately. Once that fire burns out, it is about time to begin decorating with the horse hair.
Another technique was involving the crackle glazes and a way to encourage more prominant crackle effects. Walter and Sandy took one of my pieces out of the kiln area, set it aside on the brick for about one minute, and then said I should put on my kevlar gloves and get ready to wrap my pottery in newspaper. By wrapping it very tightly in a good amount of newspaper, it encourages a lot of smoke to begin forming around my piece. The black smoke is what gives the crackle effect its dark crackles against the white glaze. Without doing this, the crackle glaze would just look like mostly solid white.
Occasionally, this wrapping your hot pottery in newspaper will turn into a blaze of fire. This is not the optimal situation, but it is pretty likely to happen and it does not harm the pottery. Having said this, you should be mindful if the wind blows and the burning pieces of newspaper go flying away. This happened to me so I had to find another metal lid to put on top of the fire hazard.
Everyone was very surprised by the colors and textures that the RAKU process produced, and I know I can hardly wait for the next RAKU pottery workshop! Luckily, Sandy Lang is hosting one at her and Walter’s studio in the Fall. I am sure lots of people will be attending once again! I would like to send my overflowing thankyou’s to Sandy and Walter for putting on such a fantastic RAKU pottery workshop. They are both so knowlegable in the world of ceramics and RAKU too. I would also like to thank my wonderful Columbus Cultural Arts Center for agreeing to host this RAKU event. Some people say “there’s no place like home” but I like to say “There’s no place like the Columbus Cultural Arts Center!”
Yay for RAKU!
