saggar
I experimented one last time at the April 2025 workshop: I wanted to approximate pit firing, so I put a burnished bowl into an aluminum foil saggar along with a variety of combustibles including dried banana peel, coffee grounds, steel wool, and some metal salts.
Here is that bowl post-firing:
The metal salts didn’t really do much, but the rest of the colorants did produce a range of neutrals! I really liked this result and plan to do more in this vein in the future.
Before we get to my pieces from the October 2025 workshop, I never finished sharing my April 2025 raku pottery as I segued into Japanese residency posts and then went on from there! When we last left off, I had shared my experiments with Mason stains and crackle glazes.
I also experimented with dark teal Mason stain and ferric chloride saggar-fired pottery!
First, we have an orb marked with copper mesh:
This is a small dish which has some marks from a copper wire on the exterior:
Next, an oblong vase! The black smoky spots are from testing out a bit of copper tape:
Finally, a small bowl, using a strip of copper mesh this time!
