A little unmotivated, and some raku pots

We have had a brilliant week of weather, with sunny days and clear nights, temperatures just approaching where you can be out in the day without a jacket. We hear it will grow cold again next week, so we’ve been trying to be outside when we can.

My motivation for writing has been low recently. I keep receiving rejections, which weighs on me. I’m making progress on a short story project, though I cannot say I’m feeling inspired. The story has ballooned into the 5000-6000 word range, and I know this is a length that both requires more energy to work with and also is perhaps more challenging to find a home for than a shorter piece.

I’ll stop complaining. I’m doing fine. I should do more journaling, more knitting, get my spinning wheel out, other things.

Last weekend, my husband, our friends, and I did a raku pottery firing together. It was our first in nearly a year, and our first time firing with other people. We spent a couple hours in the morning glazing up the pieces we had made and bisque-fired, and then we gathered in our friends’ small yard clustered among the student houses and lit the torch, brought the pots up to just over 1000 degrees Celsius (1832 Fahrenheit).

*A tray of glazed pots ready for the firing.*

Loading the kiln. There’s no fire running at this point, and the pyrometer (the black display to the lower-right of the kiln) confirms that the temperature inside the kiln is only eighteen degrees Celsius!

*Things heat up quickly. Soon the glaze has grown liquid and mature enough to remove the pots. In the photograph above, you can see the shine on the melted glaze.*

Peering through the top vent hole, we could see the pots glowing a pale orange as they reached the beginnings of incandescence. When the glaze looked wet and shiny, we removed the kiln lid and used tongs to extract each pot, transferring it into bins of shredded paper, which caught fire instantly and burned the pots deep black.

During previous firings, I’ve been better about taking videos. I ended up with only a couple from this firing, all fairly shaky. But it’s exciting here to see the reveal of the pots and hear the beautiful tinkling sound of the crazing glaze as it cracks around the rapidly cooling pots.

Decorating a horsehair piece. These did not go into the combustion chambers. Instead, at a somewhat lower temperature, we removed these pots from the kiln and applied combustible materials directly to the outside. In this case, my husband put some shredded paper into the pot and covered over the top to burn the inside black. Then, he applied pieces of horsehair to the exterior that burned into the clay. This particular piece had a hairline crack down the side, and the flame you can see here is the fire inside reaching out through that crack for oxygen.

Some far more serious cracking. This pot was thrown with a different clay than the others. The extreme thermal shock of raku, as pots are rapidly heated and cooled, necessitates a clay body that can withstand the stress. This pot cracked really quite beautifully, I thought.

Doing this firing together took me briefly out of myself. In the busy life of the school, how good it was to be completely absorbed in a different activity, where I was not thinking about time, rather was just enjoying the rush of the flame and smoke and the smell of the burning pots, excited to see what effects the glaze would get. We ended up with some beautiful pieces. We had a wonderfully memorable afternoon.