Midnight Raku Fired Pieces

Recently I had the absolute pleasure of participating in a Midnight Raku class.  It started on the Friday night with wood fired pizza, then glazing, and we started firing 8:30pm (a bit earlier than the 9pm that was planned) and went until 1am.  By the end of it, some of us were fading a bit, but we all went home happy, smelling like campfire, and treasuring our precious raku fired pieces.

I had signed up for the midnight raku session at the end of June back in January, but only realized in my last two classes at the end of May, that the studio was pretty much closed for the whole month of June.  So I quickly had to make some pieces, as I refused to drop out of such a fun event.

So these are the four pieces I pulled together, just after glazing them :

And here they are, at midnight, just after firing them :

And in the sunlight, where the true colors are best seen:

Not bad for quickly created pieces.  As the raku pieces are non-vitrified, and not supposed to be food safe, so effectively non-functional, I like to pierce my pieces, so they can only be used to hold dry items, or candles, or the like.

Here's a few process shots :

The raku kiln, with the pieces red hot at 1860 F, just before being carried out by tongs, and placed into a bed of newspaper and sawdust, and covered with a metal can.

The "burping" process, where the cans are tipped up, and the combustibles allowed to ignite again, or helped along with a small blow torch.  This apparently causes the oxygen to be consumed, providing a good reduction.  The pieces are allowed to smolder in the cans for 10 minutes (we have one person designated as a timer), and then they are again carried by tongs, to an area where they are doused with cold water.

It was quite dramatic working in the dark, by the light of a spotlight, with the steam billowing up around the pieces.  We couldn't help ourselves but to hover around, waiting until the pieces were cool enough to touch, so we could admire the results.

Then we scrubbed them up a bit, and set them out on a table, where we could admire them, and compare notes, while we waited for the next batch to come up to 1860 F, and then repeated the whole process again.  All night, 6 to 8 pieces in the kiln at a time.  What a wonderful way to spend a night!

One of our classmates, Wilf, was making beautiful native style masks, such as this one, which he modelled for a photo :

… and this one, which broke into various pieces during the process, but when glued back together, will be outstanding :

I am already looking forward to my next raku courses.  I have a horsehair session in late September, following by raku workshops in October and November.