Raku Pottery

In October I had the chance to participate in a Raku workshop.

Raku pottery is traditionally a Japanese teabowl pottery process where a handbuilt, porous vessel is fired at a lower temperature with lead glazes and pulled from the kiln while red hot to cool in the open air in a quick reduction process. The Americanized version of Raku, or Western Raku, keeps the same rapid heating and cooling of the piece, but other techniques are used to create more detail or variations in color to the pot. The most popular addition to the Western Raku process is placing the red hot pots into a metal barrel full of combustible materials that can include news paper, wood shavings, cloth, or other natural litters like leaves and hay. The reaction of the reduction firing process takes the oxygen from the clay body and turns any exposed clay not covered with glaze or slip matte black. The main design considerations for Raku include copper glazes, crackle glazes, naked raku, horsehair raku, and wax resist.