My First Solo Raku Firing

Before the Firing

The high winds of a spring in New Mexico kept me from firing until this past weekend. We had gusts around 50 mph on Saturday, but I took my chances with an open flame on Sunday morning when the winds were a little calmer.  I was feeling rather conservative with the flame, so the firing ended up taking more than twice as long as I expected.  Monday morning I was feeling more confident and corrected this fault, although I feel like one of the glazes responded to the slower firing in a more appealing manner.

I built my kiln out of a metal trash can modeled after my friend Miya's kiln, which you can see in an earlier post from the raku workshop I did back in December.  The one difference is that I am using one burner where she is using two.  I used newspaper and straw for my post-firing reduction material, but I'll be experimenting with sawdust once I get some from a handy woodworker here in town.  I mixed up four glazes and applied them in varying thicknesses for an interesting mix of textures.  I had the clay holding a cone explode in my second firing, which also added to the texture on a few of the pieces.  Unintentional catastrophes can sometimes offer an interesting effect.

I have posted pictures of my favorite pieces down at the bottom.  All of these are available at my studio, and I am happy to ship if you can't make it out here to Dixon, NM.

Adding the pots to newspaper for the post-firing reduction