Clayspace Studios

RAKU

Wednesday 12th August

9:30am - 12:30pm

This is a fun and dramatic firing technique using the outdoor gas kiln we've made especially for Raku. Pots are covered with special glaze and then the kiln is fired quickly to 1000 degrees. The pots are removed glowing hot from the kiln with metal tongs and plunged into buckets of sawdust. This reducing atmosphere brings out the metallic oxides from the glazes, and any bare clay goes a beautiful charcoal grey/black. They are then plunged into water buckets to fast cool and scrubbed clean to reveal beautiful treasures.

In this session you’ll glaze and fire a couple of pots of your choice and then be able to take them straight home with you. We’ll supply a selection of biscuit fired pots for you to choose from, then you will glaze and decorate them with our specialist Raku glazes. The pots will be packed into our homemade outdoor kiln and fired quickly to 1000 degrees. You’ll be able to peer inside the kiln and watch the alchemy as the glazes melt, mature, and begin to gently flow on the clay surfaces.

Depending on which glazes you chose and how you apply them, you could get flashes of shiny rainbow colours, metallic copper surfaces, pitted and textured glaze effects or smooth carbon black clay surfaces, or all of these effects, all on the same pot!

It’s an exciting and fascinating process involving fire, smoke, water and steam and the results are unpredictable and very beautiful.

Please note: it’s a very smokey process and you will probably smell like a bonfire by the end of it so you’ll need to think about what you wear.

If you want to bring your own work, please check with us for suitability first, as some clay bodies and shapes are more likely to crack.

Be warned - Raku is seriously addictive!!

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