DATE: April 26th 11:00am-4:00pm  (weather dependent) 

11-4pm 

Join us in our seasonal Raku Workshop.

Please bring 5 pieces of bisque. Leather gloves, a respirator if you have one, and have hair put up and out of the face. 

Raku glaze will be provided.

Feel free to bring things like horse hair, dried cow manure, saw dust, copper shavings, or straw to experiment with in the post firing reduction.

Pit firing

This is some information that I have collected over the years regarding pit firing. Hope it is of some use

• Cobber carbonate and salt (another one of my favorites). Green, red and black

• Cobber, cobalt and iron sulphates. Blue and red colors

• Steel Wool (black patterns)

• Cobber wire (most often black - if lucky red or green)

• Banana peel (another one of my favorites). Orange-ish

• Coffee grounds (gray-ish, orange-is)

• Sea weed (another favorite). Colors depend totally on the type, the amount of salt in it etc. But always looks awesome

• Many different kinds of other organic materials, nuts, leaves etc.

Well you can get cornhusks off of.....corn. You can soak lots of things like cotton balls, bits of fabric, sawdust, dry weeds etc in water with sea salt dissolved in it and allowed to dry..wrap pots in copper scrubbing mesh, tease out strands of coarse steel wool and wrap around pots for squiggly brown lines, sprinkle with copper carbonate for reds.

Olive pits, avocado pits and skins work well.

Here is the list we have so far, it is ever changing and growing…

Copper Carbonate …greens, blues, maroons, reds

Copper Sulfate …greens, blues, maroons, reds

Cobalt Carbonate …blues

Ferric Chloride …reds, yellows, oranges

Steel wool …blues, grays, pinks

Banana peels …greens, grays

Copper wire …can be red, black, blue, green, whites depending on wire

thickness and temperature of the fire

Sawdust …black, gray, blue-gray,

Cow pies… depends on what it ate…blacks, yellows, greens, grays, browns

Bacon Grease …brown/greens

Sodium Chloride …Orange, yellows, salmon, peach, gold

Coffee Grounds …browns, greens, blues

Nails …Neat blue/gray dots with halos

Bark …???

Leaves …brown/greens

Grass clippings …brown/greens

Tea Bags …???

Citrus Rinds …???

Dry Dog Food …???

Dry Cat Food …???

Miracle Grow …Not sure on colors, did leave big chunks

Root Killer …???

Potassium Chloride …???

Egg Shells …left lots of texture

Multi-vitamins …???

Red Iron Oxide …browns, maroons, rust

Aluminum …???

Straw …???

Old Medications …???

Driftwood …???

Seaweed …???

Calcium Chloride …???

Borax …???

Baking Soda …???

Magnesium Sulfate …???

Alum …???

Bones …blues (don’t go grave robbing, visit your local butcher

The 1st layer is wood shavings, or sawdust, or wood chips. You can also use dried grass clippings and dried leaves, but it does change the colors since you have changed the ingredient. Into the sawdust we add the colorants, typically the powder ones such as copper carbonate or red iron oxide. We then add the pieces either terra sigg’d or burnished. I recommend sigging, but for you purists knock yourselves out burnishing.

We then may add additional powdered colorants around various pieces if we see a need in certain areas. We then add the more solid colorants such as banana peels or manure. Once we have the colorants in place we add the newspaper layer.

Joy Nagy