Shaun Hall's Raku Ceramics Blogspot

A recent holiday trip  to   St Ives  - meant I could at last visit the Leach Pottery. This was  25 years after I had first tried visiting as a student when it was closed. I think it was just after Leach's wife, Janet, had died, so I remember feeling really disappointed.  To finally get there after so long, since my halycon  student days, was somewhat of an emotional experience. Leach is not someone who has particularly influenced my style of work, I guess I pitch somewhere within  mid century- modernism, (I was always a Rie- Coper   fan back at Uni)- but you cannot deny he is a giant of pottery- with a tremendous legacy. A few years back I developed some problems with high blood pressure and it caused me to pause and reflect and  re evaluate my own work. You tend to work within a specific narrow field, to shut out "other" stuff- perhaps I was a bit arrogant, stubborn even - but I was prone to dismiss the grand- father of Bri...

It's taken me some time to get my act together and start doing some new raku firings. I've had to overcome one or two problems regarding smoke- from a neighbour who was concerned. It's one of the issues with raku or smoke firing I guess- especially living in North Essex, which is getting increasingly built up. To this end, I sunk two post reduction bins into the ground, so that they might be lidded, and double sealed on top by a larger dustbin- to which I have grafted on a tall metal funnel. I was concerned this might add to the "draw" in the reduction bin and cause a burn out- but this fear proved unfounded. Apart from the usual initial burst of smoke before sealing- the ongoing post reduction smoke is piped - well - up up and away from the neighbours direction. I would say it's cut down on about 75 percent of the smoke. Of course I now put out the second hand wood shavings out  with water- rather than letting them smoulder away. I think this was a big fac...

I glazed a couple of volcanic/crater glaze tapered bowls recently. They almost "half" work- but I'm still not convinced I've got it right- although it's promising. I layered combinations of glaze but I'm having a slight problem with the thick layers of silicon carbide glaze crawling. Sticky fingers maybe? Lots more to come over the next few months, probably with the next recipe- Pinnel Strontium Crater - with a variety of glaze stain additions . It's a pretty reliable recipe so fingers crossed.

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.

It took me a while to summon the motivation to get back to the workshop this year, but most of January was spent mixing crater glazes. I applied them in combinations and quite thickly to these cruddy little pinch pots and was quite pleased with the initial results. It's obviously non Raku- but I have been itching to test these glazes for some time on stoneware. I fired the kiln to 1240 c. I also found quite a nice Colin Pearson style bronze glaze-slip, could be useful.  I think there is some scope for a combination of three recipes to be used on bowls. However my plan to use a crater type recipe on sculptural forms- I think has bit the dust. It just doesn't seem to fit the bill and marry up to the forms. I will need to think again and look at quieter dry matte surfaces for these, it just detracts too much from the forms. But on bowls...there could be some progress- shades of mid century modern and Lucy Rie perhaps.  ...