Shaun Hall's Raku Ceramics Blogspot

The story of my trials with textural stoneware has been a long drawn out affair, with lots of experimentation- and a fair degree of success and failure along the way. It's documented here on the blog, with early tests  recorded in about 2012- but in truth I've been dabbling a lot longer without much in the way of luck- and a lot of melted kiln shelves! The appeal of crater/lava/volcanic glazing lies in the directness and spontaniety of the effect- which seems somewhat akin to the immediacy and spirit of Raku, and it's randomn unpredictability. I settled on a base volcanic glaze with a thick white matte glaze which is applied over the top of the bisque pot. This has about 4-5 percent of silicon carbide within the base volcanic glaze recipe which of course reacts and bubbles in the glaze firing. I fire to 1240c in oxidation, and the beauty of this particular technique is that if the glaze bubbled too violently -it  can be rubbed back with a stone- glaze re applied and re-f