Raku Vase

"I first began playing with clay as a child in Illinois when huge blocks of the stuff were unearthed from the excavations for new houses during a building boom. I wish I had access to those mysterious subterranean rivers of clay now! At Cal. State University Northridge I received formal training in wheel throwing and glazing. Clay came in plastic bags and the curriculum was strictly functional stone-ware, still an important aspect of my work today.

There followed a period of experimentation and kiln building that produced some working though imperfect kilns; it also produced piles of abandoned fire brick that became other peoples patios. Since moving to the Ashland area, I have had the opportunity to learn additional firing methods such as pit firing and Raku, which have become major forms of expression for me. I am currently a member of Thrown Stone Studio, a cooperative endeavor based on the exchange of ideas and inspiration."

Raku is a Japanese word freely inter-preted as enjoyment or comfort. It was an ideograph engraved on a gold seal and given by the ruler Hideoshi to Chojiro in 1598. Raku thereby became his family title. Chojiro is credited with being the first to produce, in 1580, a low-fire glaze process which involved removing pots from a red hot kiln. Chojiro was the son of a Korean potter employed in Japan making roof tiles and as such had access only to interior sandy clay. In the aftermath of an earth-quake, when the demand for building ma-terial was extreme, Chojiro pulled tiles from a hot kiln in order to speed production. The inferior clay withstood the thermal shock and the idea for raku was born.

Paul Soldner, having read a descrip-tion of an early 2Oth century Japanese raku firing in Bernard Leach's "A Potter's Book", attempted to recreate the process in Cali-fornia in the 1960's. This marked the be-ginning of raku in the USA. American raku differs from the traditional Japanese firing method in that the glowing hot pots are pulled from the kiln with tongs and placed in a chamber filled with combustible ma-terial that bursts into flame upon contact. This post-firing reduction changes the glazes, imparting to them dramatic varia-tions and lusters. It is this unpredictable meeting of fire and pot that makes each piece unique.