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...

Over winter I've been testing out the sodium silicate technique, which yields a typical cracked looking textural surface. It's fun to play around with. I've ended up with an absolute stash of bowl forms- loosely inspired by ceramics from the Iron Age- Belgic period, after visiting various collections in Essex and Suffolk museums. I'm still figuring out exactly how to finish these pieces glaze wise- I've opted for a rough texture on these ones with a manganese wash over porcelain slip applied at the making stage. Interiors are poured over with a thin coating of Stephen Murfitt's bronze glaze recipe. I've used a blue turquoise glaze to highlight the rims. Do they work ? I guess they're the best yet and I managed to sell all three of these to a collector from Hastings- which is a nice start for this range. So yes - another nice change to Raku- and we'll see how it progresses with time.