©"Raku Tortoise Pottery" California State Fair 1996

©"Raku Tortoise Pottery" California State Fair 1996

©"Raku Tortoise Pottery," 30” x 10," turquoise, 1996 Clarissa

This piece was originally entered into the Antelope Valley Fair in Lancaster, California, and one best of show making it an automatic entry to the California State fair.

What Is Raku Pottery?

Raku Pottery is a traditional Japanese technique that uses a low-temperature Raku firing method to produce unique pottery items. The technique was first used for tea bowls, which were used in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony. For this piece I followed the Western Raku process created by Paul Soldner, from the 1960’s. Using his technique my Raku Tortoise Pot

develop exquisite coloring  by removing the hot glowing Raku Pot from the kiln with special tongs that often left an esthetic scar and placing it in a container metal garbage can filled with combustible materials like sawdust, straw, or paper. However, my Favorite combustable to use for non-food Raku Pottery is cow manure as cows have three stomachs and if the cows are feed a very high quality feed, the artist may see from the “reduction,” atmosphere (lack of oxygen), which leads to unique color effects, metallic lusters and crackle patterns and see brilliant golds and coppers come out after the Raku Pot has smoldered for 20 minutes, then cooled with warm water to arrest those golds and coppers. Other manures were tried from the animals at the traveling circus. The animal caretakers were elated that I wanted some tiger and elephant dung! However, upon taking it home and letting it sit outside to dry, the local neighbor dogs would disagree with me as I don’t think they like such a strange smell wafting through their yards. 

To see us in the National Museum of Women Artist, please visit the Clara Database (please copy and paste and allow time for loading): https://wayback.archive-it.org/2972/20181114151849/http:/clara.nmwa.org/

The Clara Data Base is very old and not longer being updated, however we are there🤩