pottery

Obvara and Slip Resist Naked Raku Workshop

in ,

I just got back from another raku workshop at Dakota Potters Supply in Sioux Falls, SD! I brought along a group of faculty, alumnae, and students from Morningside University.

This workshop specifically focused on obvara and slip resist naked raku. I really like obvara, but since I just did a bunch in the fall, I only put four pieces through the obvara process and ran ten through two slip resist processes: one-step and two-step slip resist. Dakota Potters Supply had tried to troubleshoot the slip resist one-step process in advance of our workshop, but they really hadn’t figured it out so we were all experimenting and troubleshooting with our the slip resist attempts throughout the day.

I still need to edit the photos of my pieces - plus, two of them were underfired enough that Dakota Potters Supply kept them back to refire again later, so I don’t know when those might rejoin me (if they stay whole)!

Here are photos from the day of the workshop (Saturday, April 20, 2024):

New Platters!

in

I’ve been increasing my production of platters and plates as rolling out slabs is faster than making pinch pots. I can make two or three in the time it makes me to create one pinch pot vessel.

Here are new platters / serving dishes / display plates! As a reminder, you can click into any of the images below to see them larger, and can then page through them all in that view as well.

New Planters!

in

I’ve been making quite a few planters for my own personal usage; it’d be cool to someday have my full plant collection in ceramic planters (rather than plastic)! I have hundreds of plants, so it’s a lofty goal. In addition, there’s always some amount of ceramic planter attrition due to storm/squirrel breakages so I regularly need to make replacements as well.

Here are my newest batch of planters! They all have between 2 to 4 drainage holes in their bases and the diameters range from 2-5”.

I Fired a Kiln!

in

I began my journey with ceramics in early 2020, and now four years later I’ve hit a new milestone. I mostly loaded and then fired a kiln all by myself - and I didn’t burn down the university!

It doesn’t take four years to learn to fire kilns independently, of course - I could have prioritized it much sooner, but we’ve always had a ceramics faculty member who ran the kiln room. Managing it during the active school year means not only firing the kilns, but also taking into consideration the sizes and types of ceramics being produced as well as the student artists’ timelines in order to load the kilns in the best possible way. This meant I’d usually be getting in the way if I loaded my own pieces in wherever I wanted or independently decided to fire a kiln. Plus, since my pieces are not tied to assignment due dates, mine are almost always the least important to get into a specific load! I therefore followed the same protocols as the students: dropping my finished pieces off on the waiting-to-be-loaded shelves and letting our ceramics instructor Paul take it from there. However, over time I’ve asked about and observed how the process works.

Over academic breaks, I’m often the only one aside from Paul who’s still producing ceramics. This winter break, I made a sufficient quantity of items that it seemed to me it’d be less work for him if I just loaded my work myself into each kiln - so I did. Then, between the two of us we made enough work that we filled the glaze kiln almost full… and last night, I glazed some more pieces which filled it completely.

All the dominoes had aligned: his ceramics class has only just started gearing up, so none of them are using glaze yet. I’d mostly loaded the kiln myself with a few additions from him, and we had maximized the space. It was ready to fire, I knew how to fire it, and Paul wasn’t around. I took the plunge and did it myself!

I came in this morning and checked it, and everything still looked good! Paul also happened to be in and he confirmed that I did it correctly. It still needs to cool in order to unload - I always knew it took a couple of days, but I’d never tracked the time super closely until now. I began this load at approximately 6pm on Monday and it was a Cone 6 high-fire glaze load, meaning it was set to reach approximately 2230°F. By 5pm on Tuesday it was in the cooling process and had gotten down to 358°F. That’s still too hot to unload; my research indicates that you can rush to begin unloading around 200°F by wearing full protective body coverings and being careful about where you place the pieces, but that sounds like a lot of bother and can risk cracking damage. Instead of returning late this evening, I’ll just wait until tomorrow when it has fully cooled down to ambient temperature.

New Stoneware!

in

I’ve been steadily, slowly making food-safe, high-fire stoneware ceramics as well. Here are some pieces I produced this past year which I hadn’t gotten around to publishing until now!

First we have small plates - I’ve been using them as dessert or appetizer dishes!

Next, I’ve been continuing my landscape vase series! These are “rainy” versions.

My Obvara Raku Vases

in

And here’s the last batch of obvara raku ceramics from my recent workshop at Dakota Potters Supply - these are the burnished vases!

This first oblong vase was the only one that I saw and heard crack during the sequential baths. It is still usable decoratively, but it does have that asterisk about it so I likely won’t exhibit or sell it. (Note, I purposely selected photos of it that don’t draw attention to the relatively large crack.)

While at the workshop, I thought that was my only casualty - but when I was applying kitchen wax to the surfaces at home, I noticed this next squat vase has a small hairline crack as well. It’s not nearly as apparent as the above piece’s flaw as it requires close examination to spot. While a crack is never ideal, in a low-fired piece like these which was always going to be decorative (not water-tight nor food-safe), it’s far less problematic than it would be in a piece intended for that kind of usage. I’ll probably keep this one myself!

The rest of the below vases are completely unblemished. This little bud vase is the smallest of the bunch.

Next we have a larger, somewhat soft rectangular vase!

And finally, a somewhat flared cylindrical vase.

I hope you’re as into the obvara pieces as I am. I really like the aesthetics this process produces - but more than that, from a conceptual standpoint I love the organic chaos that creates those aesthetics.

My Obvara Raku Plates and Platters

in

In my previous post, I shared the obvara raku bowls I made on my October 21, 2023 workshop at Dakota Potters Supply. I also made some plates and platters! As always, you can click on any of the photos below to see them larger.

This first burnished plate depicts a bear, and you can’t convince me otherwise.

This next burnished plate is smaller than the first - it’d be good to hold jewelry or other small items.

A small obvara raku plate by artist Shelby Prindaville.

This final piece is the largest - it’s a platter or tray, and it has some light texture on its inside surface.

My Favorite Ceramic I've Made Yet: My Last April 2023 Raku Saggar Piece

in ,

I have a lot of my own ceramic pieces that I love, and there are a number of those that I plan to keep for myself for the foreseeable future! I’m pleased with each of the ceramics that came out of my recent April 2023 raku workshop; that work spans the realm between good to fantastic. One piece I made is my favorite ceramic I’ve made yet, though, which is a hurdle that was relatively easy to pass when I was a beginner back in early 2020, but is now a much rarer event.

This piece, like the others in this series I’ve made, was dipped in three coats of ferric chloride, wrapped in Muehlenbeckia axillaris or Creeping Wire Vine and then aluminum foil, and saggar-fired in a raku kiln. It is finished with kitchen wax.

Ceramic glazing in general is a lottery; there are a lot of variables and some are outside of your control. I think I won that lottery with this vessel!

April 2023 Raku Crackle and Saggar Ceramics

in ,

This is my second post reviewing my April 2023 raku workshop ceramics! This one will cover two of my three “baked potato” aluminum foil saggar-fired ceramics and my clear crackle piece.

Based on my experimentation using plants at my April 2022 raku workshop, I only had real luck with saggar firing Muehlenbeckia axillaris, colloquially known as Creeping Wire Vine. I therefore used it again! Below is a plate that was dipped in three coats of ferric chloride and then wrapped in the vine and then aluminum foil and fired. The Muehlenbeckia axillaris impact is relatively subtle because it mostly went white to medium gray, but the plate overall turned out well. The very first time I did this “baked potato” technique, I used a matte clear acrylic spray. The second time, I went with gloss. I didn’t really love either, so this time, I went with applying a kitchen wax. I really like the way the wax looks, so I think that’ll be the winner moving forward!

Next, I did the same process with a vase - on this piece, I also sprinkled just a little sugar on as well for some small-scale spotting in the design. This one’s interesting as the Muehlenbeckia axillaris is more apparent, and it produced the full value spectrum on the same vase; the top vine piece is white to light grey, while the bottom vine carbonized a lot more and turned medium grey to black.

And finally, I chose to do a clear crackle on a small, necked vase. Handbuilding necked vessels is tricky, and I complicated matters with this piece by leaving my building process evident on the outside to contribute texture (while smoothing it for structure and stability on the inside). This was quite risky; I knew there was a good chance this piece could crack or break with thermal shock due to the thinner seamed areas. However, I was fortunate - it made it through the firing completely unscathed! I wanted to enhance the seams and stress spots that I had intentionally retained, so I painted over each of them and the lip of the vase with wax before glazing with Clear Crackle on the exterior. As I’ve explained before, this means the glaze doesn’t stick to the waxed areas, and the wax burns off in the kiln. The exposed, unglazed clay body then carbon traps the smoke in the post-kiln reduction atmosphere, turning a dark, smoky grey. I finished the piece by putting kitchen wax on the unglazed areas.

Again, none of the “cracks” in the below piece are structural - they are all decorative and this vase is fully sound.

April 2023 Raku Copper-Glazed Ceramics

in

I’m going to do a few different posts about my April 2023 raku workshop pieces because there’s a lot of good work to share. In this first one, I will review my copper-glazed pieces!

Below is a platter, which has some texture on its surface; I imprinted an equine femur into the clay body thanks to bones I was allowed to keep using from the LSU SVM anatomy lab. I first glazed it with White Crackle, then wiped the white crackle back down so that it stayed in the impressions, and also applied it to the rim. Then I glazed over the top with Copper Sand. I thought this would impact the coloration, but the white crackle (at least at that thickness) only really affected the sheen; where it was applied the glaze is glossy rather than matte. Though it’s not precisely what I envisioned, it’s a strong piece.

Next, we have a small, leaning vase. I chose to apply wax to the rim and throat. Then I glazed the exterior with Copper Sand, keeping in mind that the glaze doesn’t stick to the waxed areas. In the kiln the wax then burns off, allowing the unglazed clay body to carbon trap the smoke from the reduction afterwards. I was planning on staining the raw clay, but I ended up holding off as the variably smoky surface is interesting in its own right. I need to actually decide, as I will want to wax the raw surface if I don’t stain it.

This is probably the biggest of my raku pieces this go-round. This vase vessel has Litho Carb on the inside and Copper Sands on the outside. (I really like Copper Sand as it’s pretty predictable in its behavior for me, which is a rarity when doing raku.) The interior lip has an abalone-like appearance!

Next, we have my “golden bowl.” This piece is glazed with Dakota Potter’s new Peacock on the interior, and once again uses Copper Sand on the exterior. One of my students kept hovering her hands above it and singing reverential “aaah” noises!

And below is my final copper raku piece of the workshop! This one is an oddball shape; I wanted to push myself to make some handbuilt, necked vessels and in doing so created this flora-inspired vessel. I glazed it with Litho Carb on the inside and Midnight Luster on the outside.

My 39.57, -97.66 Ceramics

in ,

After I made my 100% wild, site-specific Whiterock Conservancy ceramic collection entitled 41.816, -94.646 Ceramics, I knew I wanted to add other geographic coordinates to my oeuvre. Upon discussing this wish with family and friends, my father suggested that I might be able to get some wild clay from the brick plant Cloud Ceramics in my hometown of Concordia, Kansas. We brainstormed different supplies of ash for me to create custom ash glazes with, and settled on ash from my parents’ Republican River Valley firewood and the local Cloud County landfill (they burn organics like fallen tree limbs).

Several calls and trips my dad took to fetch the requisite media later, I had two different colors of native clay as well as the two aforementioned sources of ash. The clay from the brick plant arrived in dry chunks, and it had a lot of rocks and different densities of clays embedded in the pieces. After trying a couple of other methods (sifting and straining), I ended up going back to my tried-and-true, low-tech solution for cleaning the clay: meticulously smushing little pieces of it by hand to remove the debris and equalize consistencies.

I began working on this series in late November. I had a deadline of mid-February if I wanted to include 100% site-specific ceramics in my solo show in the Frank Carlson Design Room. That’s a turnaround of less than three months! I tasked my studio assistant work study students with helping me clean the clay, which helped speed up the process. I also tried to keep the pieces relatively small to maximize the number of pieces I’d be able to complete.

Here are some photos of the process!

As you can see above, after we cleaned the clay I handbuilt 30 ceramic pieces (15 out of each clay color) and bisque fired them. I then separated them into two different firings: half went into a cone 8 electric kiln firing and half went into a cone 9 gas reduction firing. After sifting the ash and removing all the larger chunks, I created 9 different custom ash glazes: 8 using all possible combinations of yellow clay, grey clay, landfill ash, and fireplace ash in 1:3 ratios, and 1 hybrid glaze with 1:1:1:1 proportions of each. I wasn’t sure what any of the glazes would look like, so I ensured each color of clay and kiln setting had the full range of options and asked my work study students to take copious notes so that we could learn from the results.

Here are my 39.57, -97.66 Ceramics! I managed to finish these in time to include in my Frank Carlson Design Room solo show. I like them all, but I am particularly in love with the ones that came out of the cone 9 gas reduction firing. I’ve only fired a few times in gas kilns so far, and this is the first time I’ve gotten really good reduction - it’s gorgeous! I like them so much that I want to make more (and larger) pieces to add into this collection, and glaze with a little more intention now that I know what the custom glazes I created will do. The clay cleaning process is tedious enough that there is a limit to how long I’ll want to keep working with each wild batch of clay, but my interest hasn’t waned in the Concordia series yet.

Landscape Ceramics

in

I’ve been working on a series of landscape ceramics for some time now, and I plan to continue to add pieces! Here are some I completed in early 2022; these are all stoneware fired to Cone 6. The first three are vases, and then there’s a bowl, an egg-shaped vessel, and six small planters.

My 41.816, -94.646 Ceramics

in

In my three-person show Whiterock Art at the Betty Strong Center here in Sioux City, IA, I have 37 pieces on display! There are 2 painted reliefs, 20 8x8” chromatograms, and 15 handmade ceramics. I’ll post photos from the show and reception shortly, but right now I want to focus on those 15 ceramic pieces in detail.

My Whiterock Conservancy ceramic body of work is special in that it is 100% site-specific in every component. I dug my own clay out of the Middle Raccoon river beach cliff, cleansed it of rocks, roots, and other debris, and then I did not amend it (often potters mix additives into their harvested clay to improve elasticity or other desirable characteristics, but I thought that would weaken this collection’s conceptual power). Below are images documenting my clay collection!

I handbuilt 15 different vessels, and as I was doing so, I thought about if I should glaze them at all, and if so, would transparent glaze from non-local sources taint the project…? I shared this quandary with friends, including my wonderful former colleague and master ceramist Susan Nelson.

After a couple of weeks mulling it over, Susan arrived at a different solution: ash glazing. I learned from her that ash can be used as a glaze, often in combination with clay to lower its melting point and smooth out the finish. I reached out to Whiterock Conservancy co-founder Liz Garst to see if I could collect some of the ash they generate, and she was kind enough to collect me a gallon bag of ash from a slash pile burn primarily composed of invasive honeysuckle bushes.

I inter-library-loaned a book on natural and ash glazes and conducted a variety of tests to determine the best ash glaze mixtures, application methods, and firing temperatures - but I also had deadlines to meet that meant I couldn’t dally too long in the experimentation phase. I eventually settled on using three ash glaze mixtures that used different proportions of clay to ash mixed with water and put 6 pieces in a Cone 8 electric kiln firing and 9 pieces in a Cone 9 gas kiln firing. Below (respectively from left to right) is a still wet raw ware handbuilt bowl, bisque-fired pieces, my work study students and I experimenting with ash glaze recipes in the ceramics studio, and ash-glazed bisque ware awaiting its glaze firing.

Below are are the finished pieces in the 41.816, -94.646 collection. Those title numbers are the latitude and longitude of the artworks’ origin, and if you input them into a map application you’ll see a pin drop on Whiterock Conservancy near the river beach! I love that these ceramics are made of the land itself, and are glazed with the conservation efforts of people today trying to restore what we’ve lost in ecosystem health and diversity. The colors, texture, and variation resonate in this body of work, and I look forward to comparing these pieces with future geographic coordinate collections, as I plan to create site-specific ceramics from other localities as well.

Rolling with Ceramic Glaze Changes

in ,

Speaking of glazes: I’ve been learning that the discipline of ceramics involves many variables, and some of the variables are less constant than I’d expect. In the discipline of painting, when I use up paint and I need to buy replacement tubes, they are very consistent in formulation so they are almost never perceptibly different. In ceramics, due to weight, volume, and cost issues we mix most of our glazes ourselves. This introduces a lot more human error compounded by potential supply line vendor changes in the ingredients and user contamination. To continue the comparison, it’d be like if I switched brands and sometimes even types of paint and expected continuity!

To state it simply: I’ve learned that when a bucket of glaze is gone and we remix it, I cannot expect the same aesthetics or behavior from the new glaze as from the old, even if they are purportedly the same. In some ways this is disconcerting, of course. But it is also a real opportunity, and it adds some exciting pressure and novelty into the glazing process. The novelty is self-explanatory; the pressure comes from if you want consistency since you only have as long as those buckets last for the desired effects to relatively predictably result.

Below is how Cone 6 Larry’s Black under Iron White looked with the bucket of Iron White that we were using last year.

You can see that the Iron White behaved in a very glossy way, was relatively thin at one coat but varied in thickness dependent on number and types of application coats with opacity ranging from translucent to decently opaque. At its most opaque, it was white. The Larry’s Black underneath went to a glossy and stable spectrum of various values of blue dependent on the application thickness of both colors.

We used up that bucket of glaze a few months ago, and the new Cone 6 Iron White appeared. Below are two new pieces that use Green Tweed, Larry’s Black, and the new mix of Iron White.

This Iron White is thicker at one application coat, a little yellower, and more opaque and matte. It also interacts quite differently with Larry’s Black. The matte-over-gloss effect causes the Iron White to crater and blister atop Larry’s Black; you can see it does not do that over Green Tweed as Green Tweed is itself more of a matte glaze.

Cratering and blistering are frequently considered “glaze defects,” but I enjoy the texture that some “glaze defects” provide - if you review my body of stoneware ceramic work you’ll notice that I am drawn to crawling as well.

Since these were my first pieces with the new bucket of Iron White, I didn’t know about this new interaction yet - I was expecting glossy results aligned to that first batch above. Now that I know, I’ve glazed a bunch of new ceramics with this cratering/blistering effect in mind, and they are waiting in the kiln until it’s filled up and ready to fire. I’m excited to see them come out!

New Cone 6 Glaze Combination!

in

When my parents visited this past fall, my mom tried her hand at ceramics! Then at Thanksgiving, she glazed her first piece. She decided to use four different Cone 6 glazes on the small dish - she overlapped Green Tweed, Red Earth and Iron White around the sides, and then filled in the bare central triangle left in the middle with Baby Blue.

Red Earth was a new-to-the-studio glaze that we had recently acquired; it was an old recipe our ceramics faculty Paul Adamson unearthed and wanted to try again. I didn’t imagine it would look very good in combination with Green Tweed, but the overlap on my mom’s dish was small so I figured it wouldn’t matter.

When my mom’s first piece of ceramics came out of the glaze firing, I was really surprised - the overlapped spot of Red Earth over Green Tweed looked metallic and reflective! So far, I’ve only seen that kind of glaze result from raku, and those are somewhat unstable and decorative (not watertight). I was excited to see what this new food-safe stoneware glaze combination would look like on a larger scale, so I tried it out on several pieces! This glaze combination seems somewhat chaotic in terms of its uniformity, density, and reflectiveness, but I’ve always enjoyed the balance that natural chaos can bring to my tight artistic hand.

There are two views of each of the three pieces above. The bowl and egg-shaped vase both use Green Tweed as the base and then have Red Earth applied to most of the top. The striped planter combines Iron White, Green Tweed, and Red Earth in different layers.

Here are three more pieces - two more broken-eggshell vessels and another planter! These also experimented with Iron White, Green Tweed, and Red Earth in different ways. I need to take better notes on my processes, as I no longer remember the order of layering on each of these and I didn’t write it down, but more testing will reveal all such secrets in time.

Overall, I’m really pleased with how these all turned out and plan to continue experimenting with these glaze combinations more in the future!

More Raku!

in

You got a sneak peek at some of my recent raku work in my exhibition shots from Functional Aesthetic, but here is the full reveal!

Above are three photos of one “baked potato” bowl. I used my own hair again as well as sugar for the carbonized marks on this piece.

This vase is very difficult to photograph well; it’s currently on exhibit, but once it comes back I’m going to see if I can capture it a bit better digitally. A couple of my friends who viewed the show said this was their favorite piece of mine. The way the glaze dots turned out reminds me of inset abalone shell.

This piece certainly didn’t turn out as planned; I experimented with a turquoise crackle glaze, but I really did not like the way the color came out, so we went ahead and re-fired it. I much prefer this hammered copper look!

This above bowl is decently large, and I chose to do the outside in a relatively matte glaze while the inside is a high gloss. It gives me dragon egg vibes. The Functional Aesthetic curator placed this piece in the choicest display spot, and I learned today that it was sold! I did see a viewer admiring it and gesturing to and around it at the reception, so I wonder if she’ll be providing its new home or if a different patron snapped it up.

This above vessel is kind of football-shaped, and its surface reminds me of a somewhat aged/stained city map. It has my own hair and sugar burned into the white crackle surface. I am quite into this piece.

I was really excited about how this piece turned out, as it’s adding into the “broken egg” series of clear crackle pieces I’m developing. The shape is hard to convey in photo, but it leans in a way that feels quite anthropomorphic - at least to me!

This bowl was intended to be another in the “broken egg” series, but it cracked coming out of the kiln due to the thermal shock and my thin walls. That’s more literal than I’d like for the “broken eggs” to be. It is still in one piece, but even after I epoxy over the crack (which I plan to do to bolster its structural integrity), it will have that weakness as it’s a fairly sizeable crack. I’m not sure if given the severity of the crack if I’ll want to display this piece, but if I do I plan to list it as NFS (not for sale).

And here is yet another casualty; however, this football-shaped vessel’s crack is more minor.

Upcoming: "Functional Aesthetic" at the Le Mars Arts Center

in

This is a milestone - I have my first ever juried ceramics exhibition which will be at the Le Mars Arts Center later this month. I only began working with the discipline of ceramics in 2020, and so this is an exciting development. I will have five handbuilt pieces from my raku firings in July and October 2021 on display in this Functional Aesthetic group show.

Functional Aesthetic will be open from November 9 - December 18th, 2021. The opening reception will be Friday, November 12th from 5-7pm.

The Le Mars Arts Center is located at 200 Central Ave SE, Le Mars, IA 51031. Contact info: 712-546-7476, lemarsarts@gmail.com, www.lemarsarts.com. Hours: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday 1-5pm, Thursday 1-7pm, Saturday 10am-4pm.

More Stoneware Ceramics!

in

I’ve been posting about my raku productivity of late, but I have also continued to make stoneware pottery too!

I really like the combination of two glazes - standard Cone 6 recipes for a white and “smoky brown.” I particularly like the crawling that frequently results. I sometimes add in a complementing lighter grey glaze which is a discard mix of my own creation and therefore likely very difficult to reproduce once gone.

Below are eight different pieces. They include, respectively, a bowl, two images of a planter, two more of a second bowl, a third bowl, two images of a dish, a fourth bowl, two images of a fifth smaller bowl, and two images of a sixth bowl.

Second Raku Workshop - Crackle Edition

in

I only did one crackle piece (and this time, I went with the natural crackle as opposed to the white) this go-round, but it is my favorite of all of the pieces from either raku workshop. In fact, in a sense I think this might be my first professional piece of ceramic artwork. Or perhaps ceramic object.

What I mean by that is that so far, my ceramic studio practice has involved experimentation and learning, but my primary design purpose has been functional. The aesthetics matter, of course, but don’t take primacy over the form. I’ve been making pottery. That’s a completely valid ceramic arena!

However, in this piece, the function took a backseat to conceptual and aesthetic goals. I’m really pleased with how it turned out!

Second Raku Workshop - Copper Glazes Edition

in ,

I decided to try copper glazes again, but with some wild cards thrown in - I experimented more with unglazed negative spaces, and tested out some different types of glaze.

This first piece has “Midnight Luster” glaze on the interior and a lithium carbonate glaze on the exterior. It’s quite attractive in photo, but it did suffer from a bit of pitting, meaning the glaze pooled in some spots and it bubbled and hardened in ways that are suboptimal; instead of a smooth surface, there are rougher points within.

This next piece is interesting in that I had intended it to be a more standard bowl, but in the bisque firing process its sidewall accidentally got damaged and it was involuntarily edited into the shape it has now. I sanded it down a bit and decided to move forward with it; I can imagine that the cavity might improve accessibility to whatever is stored within!

I was pretty proud of this platter as a handbuilt piece, but unfortunately though it made it through the bisque firing unscathed it was unable to handle the temperature fluctuations of the raku firing and it sustained a crack across about 2/3 of its base. It is not salable now, but I still wanted to share the piece with you!

Finally, here is the most experimental piece of the metallic batch - I used both “Emerald Copper” glaze and a thinned out crackle glaze to create the exterior dripping decoration, and used “Midnight Luster” on the interior. The bottom of the exterior is just the result of carbon trapping in unglazed raku clay.