new raku

Hi Steve, very nice, I love your copper red colours, and Mrs Steve, your pot is just wonderful, but the Mexico pot is that Pit fired?? Ok I have been thinking of firing my old wood raku kiln up, so what a good idea for a party, now see what you have done!!! gone and inspired me.

Yours in clay Art Elaine.

elaine - i've done the black style before. ceramics monthly wrote it up about 12 years ago.

any clay - i use soldate60 usually... a cone 10 claybody. porcelain is nice. but you can also do a regular pot and add porcelain slip over the piece to get that final smooth layer.

burnished pot, or not. bisquefire. mix with salad oil a SMALL tablespoon or so of ground graphite. coat the salad oil onto a pot much like glazing.

put the pot into a can, surround the pot with sawdust. close the lid of the can. fire in a kiln until "can red". shut down the kiln, open when cooled...

the graphite makes additional carbon (from the saw dust) switch chemically over to graphite carbon - a richer looking *gun metal* black carbon.

pretty easy to do actually. except in mexico they use millions of pensiles for their graphite where i got a pound of ground stuff for free from a plastic molding house i know. most black plastic you see has graphite in it for the coloring agent.

see ya

steve

I'm so, so envious....

Donna

Lovely glazes esp on the masks :o)