Raku Lamps (Post Fire Reduction or American Raku)
The wheel is addicting.
Raku kicks ass.
I'm doing lamps for now.
The heat stress in Raku firing creates micro-cracks. Not good for guacamole bowls or bongs. No problem for lamps.
The glazes are recipes that get passed around on the internet with a few personal tweaks here and there.
Raku is all about fire and smoke and shit flying everywhere. Throw them in the kiln and yank them out at 1200' to 2500' F with tongs.
They go straight from the open kiln into a bucket of sawdust, shredded paper, oily rags, old underwear or whatever burns well and produces a desired affect. Then you run around as fast as you can with scissors in your hands, mix beer with whiskey and go swimming right after you eat.
Sometimes they come out of the bucket looking ok. Sometimes you dump them in a garbage can. You never know what the end result will be.
posted by slaghammer at 4:24 PM
6 Comments:
Hey, thanks for visiting my (in progress and nowhere near complete) blog. I probably will be doing as you suggest, once I get it all together. This reminds me that I suppose I'd better not make the blog public until I get it going!
email me if you want to be notified when I get my act together!
Yes, drop me a line when all of your cogs and gears are cranked up to ramming speed.
Wow Slag! How beautiful! Among all the others I collect, I also collect pottery & this stuff is gorgeous! My weakness is glass, form & function. You have got these knees shaking...this work is exceptional!
Hi Skinny, it means a lot to me to hear that. These are my babies and I grow very attached to them by the time they survive the final firing, even the ugly ones.
Is your stuff available to purchase? If so, how?
Let me know....erykahhh@yahoo.com Put raku in the subject line or it will get pulled by spam blocker. This is a site i look at rarely, but I will check to see if you reply. I am looking for a table lamp 25" high (shade included in that height, but not necessarily needed for purchase) It also needs a 3 way switch as it is used for reading.
Very beautiful!
Zile Design....
Hi Anonymous, thank you for the kind words. I do sell some of my pieces on occasion but only locally (South Central Texas) and in small numbers due to time pressures of my day job. I do have a website in the works and I hope to expand my sales in the near future. I’m not sure how I’m going to get around one particularly important issue regarding the actual color of the glazes. With Raku firing, many times the colors are to some extent iridescent. It is impossible to tell from the jpegs what color they actually are. This is significant enough to cause some people to choose a different piece once they see them in person. I’m working on lighting and photo resolution combinations that might result in reasonably accurate jpeg “swatches” but so far, I have not solved that problem. I will post the url to the website as soon as it is up an running. I hope to have all of the technical issues ironed out by then.
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