Muehlenbeckia axillaris

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.

My April 2022 Raku Ceramics

in , ,

I just completed another raku workshop this past weekend, and as I was looking through my files I realized I’ve not yet published the raku pieces I made at my last one in April 2022. Clearly I should do that before sharing my latest workshop photos and products!

On my April 2022 raku workshop, I wanted to try to carbonize various plant fronds or leaves onto the surface of my pieces. This was a complete experiment, and it was mostly a failure. I tried a variety of ferns and tropicals out, and one after another, they burned away without leaving a trace. Here are some plates that I attempted to salvage after that didn’t work out. With the first, I pivoted to a sugar and horsehair application. With the second, I tried to use ferric chloride to stain the surface with plant leaves that weren’t carbonizing, but they just left those not-terribly-appealing ferric chloride splotches.

Once I realized those techniques were not working, I tried etching fern fronds onto a plate in a “baked potato” aluminum foil saggar firing; it kind of worked, but I think it’s underwhelming. Since none of those plant techniques were doing super well, I just put a litho carb copper glaze onto my final plate.

I also made a rounded crackle vessel and the glaze turned out really well, but the ceramic physically cracked due to thermal shock so it’s got that permanent asterisk associated with it.

I glazed this spherical vessel with copper glazes (Copper Sand is on the exterior and I think that’s Midnight Luster on the interior), and it came out looking like a little planet! This one’s a definite favorite.

And finally, the one plant piece that turned out beautifully and justified all the failures: this is another “baked potato” saggar firing, and the Muehlenbeckia axillaris vines I used carbonized perfectly into this vase’s surface.

I also lost a large platter-like vessel (it broke into quite a few pieces and was not salvageable) and had another plate fuse with a kiln brick and lose part of its bottom. I eventually recycled that broken platter-like piece in my rock tumbler!