Raku is an instant satisfaction sort of pottery. Normally, pottery is a protracted sort of process involving many patient days of drying the pot, firing it for many hours, glazing and decorating it then firing it for yet more hours. Pots produced by the Raku method can be glazed, decorated, fired, reduced and cooled all in the space of an hour or so. The trade-off for all of the excitement and instant gratification is that the wares are not very durable, not really suitable for food use and they usually will not hold water. And the results are not at all predictable. So, we just do it for fun and the social interaction.

In the same way that the first pancake is usually a “dog” pancake, the first Raku pot of the session is expected to be a “dog” pot. i.e. a disappointment or embarrassment. Today, amazingly enough, there were no “dog” pots. Not too shabby, particularly as it was ten years or more since our last effort.

The players on this occasion were Helen, her daughter Danielle, husband Mohammed, their three boys and myself. O.K, we did cheat a bit, in that the starting pots or blanks were pre-made by a potter with a bit of experience. That was the boring bit. The important part, the exciting, creative part involving choice of Glaze, how and where to apply and in what thickness, this was embraced with enthusiasm by the players. You will have guessed that the end result most times bore little kinship with the player’s grand vision. As with childbirth, the process is quickly forgotten on arrival of the beautiful baby or pot.

The prime source of mystery and magic with Raku is the reduction bin. The pots, red hot from the kiln, are placed with tongs into a metal rubbish bin containing combustibles like saw dust or newspaper which quickly bursts into flames. When the lid is placed on the bin the flames are starved of oxygen. Year 7 Chemistry, remember? So, you get red colour in the glaze if the flames win, blue colour if they fail. O.K.? The blue and red colours are both acceptable, but the devil is in trying to have control over what happens. Most potters seem to use newspaper or sawdust. The potter/artist John Percival claimed to have used old linoleum as the reduction medium for the mottled red/green of his Angels series. Have yet to try that. In the past, we have had good results with pine needles and dried horse manure, but this time we used dead fern fronds. Plenty around after the long dry summer.

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Conclusions? Best of the pots being taken home to U.K.    For next time – we suspect that the best reds are obtained by throwing an extra handful of combustibles onto the pot before putting then lid on