Week Ten, Spring 2025

Raku is basically all luck. and… “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity” 

– Seneca (philosopher of Ancient Rome) & Molly Otremba (ceramic post-bacc of modern times)  

Ugh, okay our spring break week was dedicated to raku and glaze chem. (I wanted to also get some making in but that was quickly eaten up but the many glaze kilns I ran) 

Base glaze for my Triaxial was a Black luster I had tested out the day before, I made the OG batch with Custer Feldspar but swapped out it for G-200 in the triaxial as material A, then tested two colorents for materials B and C. My thought was to put them all on a shelf and lift the shelf out of the kiln as I had done with the line blend but it was hotter and too heavy so they definitely didn't get reduced as heavy as I had wanted because I had to remove all 21+ tiles out one by one. I still got good information, that I will make little batches of and try again. As I was dumping out the red solo cups I knew I should keep them! 

Anyway, in other raku news, I tested out a copper red luster that had some matte crackle to it and I had to refire the test tile to get it hot enough, then it worked so I made a decent batch to glaze a piece in it. But it flopped, I don’t think I got enough glaze on the piece and I dropped it as I was taking it out. Soft brick broke, it was too hot and heavy for me to get good leverage and I just shouldn't have done it alone. Very frustrating. I wanted some instant dopamine from a successful raku, especially after doing all that glaze chem and testing but… I love it, how ceramics just keeps humbling me. I thought I was a fairly skilled and knowledgeable rakuer but after these 3 days of notes and watching the variability with different recipes and temps and reduction times… 

Maybe I shouldn't have had that mindset, that I knew what was happening. Or, like I knew what was happening but I wasn’t paying attention as closely as I should have been. Atmospheric is always unpredictable but I believe there is a way to learn enough about a certain set of raku glazes to know how and when to fire, pull, and reduce the work to get similar outcomes. I also want to complain about how there seems to be very little information out there about raku in comparison to soda, salt, wood. 

I’m excited to continue this research and plan to invest more time into it. I honestly can’t wait to get them all organized with detailed notes and published on glazy.