Ceramics elective

I loved the ceramics elective.  We started with a black and white image of a flower, leaf or seed head and had to develop our finished ceramic piece from that, using mark-making and modelling of clay maquettes.  It was amazing to see how different each finished piece looked to the original image yet was still visually connected to it. 

We bisque fired the pieces then glazed them with resist and sacrifical glaze for naked raku

The black areas have been left unglazed, leading to smoke penetration which colours the clay.  The white/mottled glaze flakes off to leave a matt-white crackled surface

The pieces were fired in an updraught rocket kiln, which is very quick, taking about an hour.  The pieces are then put into a dustbin filled with sawdust which provides the smokey reduction atmosphere to turn the unglazed surfaces black

These are the finished pieces

The thin flakes of sacrificial glaze are wonderful in their own right and I glued some together to make some tiny and very delicate collages

We also got the chance to throw a pot and do some traditional raku

All in all it was a brilliant two weeks, gave me plenty to think about and was a great way to end 6 weeks of electives.