hand building

Honey Rakuware

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I first tried honey raku in October 2023; I didn’t really like my own results at the time, but I learned two main takeaways in the process:

  • you very much want thin strands of honey rather than thick, so that it pulls into beads rather than leaving thick streaks

  • the honey works best on convex rather than concave forms, due to its propensity to run off vs. pool inside

With those in mind, I decided to give the honey raku finish another try atop two orbs, and I brought some honey drizzler sticks and a glass along for better stream control rather than using my earlier, clumsier technique of dispensing the honey via the squeeze bottle. Rotating these while they were insanely hot was asking a lot, so I really appreciated that Wanda was up for the challenge as she did that for me while I applied the honey.

Here’s the smaller sphere:

And the larger sphere:

The resulting pieces’ exteriors were smokier than the interiors since barely any honey made it inside, and the white shining out from the insides was distracting. I carefully stained the interior of the larger orb with India ink, and then watered it down a bit before staining the interior of the smaller orb as well. I love how they turned out; the bead trails of the honey almost look like planetary maps, comet/asteroid tracking paths, or constellations… a little bit like audio visualizations.

I also decided to experiment with a blue copper glaze in combination with the honey raku on a small bowl, even though the concave interior would be a challenge. What you can’t see in the below images is twofold: first, the blue lip is complemented by a blue base line, only visible when you lift the bowl up or get really down low. Second, this piece unfortunately lost the thermal shock lottery and has a number of minute cracks which make it less structurally sound. However, since it’s a decorative, low-fired piece anyway (as opposed to being food-safe or water-tight), the cracks are a permanent asterisk - but they won’t stop me from displaying or using it!

Copper Glaze Rakuware

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Here are the pieces of pottery I made with copper glazes (mostly) at the October 2024 raku ceramic workshop!

First, we have a textured orb:

Next, a hexagonal textured tray:

A rectangular tray:

And finally, an experimental landscape vessel which uses the new-to-me “yellow crackle” glaze in combination with two other copper glazes:

New Platters!

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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!

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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”.

My Obvara Raku Vases

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

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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

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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

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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.

Landscape Ceramics

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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.

Hard at Work Making Ceramics

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I’ve been spending a lot of studio time with ceramics lately as I’ve got several bodies of work in progress simultaneously and each have different time pressures. I’ll discuss each as they continue to develop! However, in these photos I was preparing for the Dakota Potters Supply raku workshop I attended in Sioux Falls this past Saturday, April 23rd along with our ceramics instructor Paul Adamson and two Morningside students.

Since this semester has been so busy, I only had one raku piece ready to go by April 14th (the start of Morningside’s Easter break). I needed to have all the pieces I wanted to bring in the bisque firing by April 20th, which meant finishing the rawware by April 17th to give it time to dry. I cranked out seven more pieces over the holiday, so I was able to bring eight with me to the workshop! My sweet spot is between six to nine pieces for each workshop day, so that worked out perfectly.

In the first image, you can see me in the Morningside ceramics studio as I used the slab roller, a foam square, and a 6” mushroom anvil to prepare a few small platters. In the second photo, I’m handbuilding a vase in my kitchen at home.