Clayspace Studios

RAKU

Wednesday 27th August

1:30pm - 4:30pm

In this session you’ll glaze and fire a couple of pots of your choice and then be able to take them straight home with you.

We’ll supply a selection of biscuit fired pots for you to choose from, then you will glaze and decorate them with our specialist Raku glazes. The pots will be packed into our homemade outdoor kiln and fired quickly to 1000 degrees. You’ll be able to peer inside the kiln and watch the alchemy as the glazes melt, mature, and begin to gently flow on the clay surfaces.

Your pots are removed glowing hot from the kiln with metal tongs and plunged into “reduction” containers of sawdust. The next stage is to take the pots out of the sawdust and plunge them into water buckets to fast-cool, and then you’ll wash the carbon deposits from your pots to reveal your beautiful treasures.

Depending on which glazes you chose and how you apply them, you could get flashes of shiny rainbow colours, metallic copper surfaces, pitted and textured glaze effects or smooth carbon black clay surfaces, or all of these effects, all on the same pot!

It’s an exciting and fascinating process involving fire, smoke, water and steam and the results are unpredictable and very beautiful.

Please note: it’s a very smokey process and you will probably smell like a bonfire by the end of it so you’ll need to think about what you wear.

Be warned - Raku is seriously addictive!!

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