Sunday, January 01, 2012

Raku Red

This is about the only thing I have accomplished the past month. I've been working too many overtime hours at my paying job and haven't been able to fire anything, but this has a lot of potential.
It is actually a low-fire commercial red glaze that is dinnerware safe. I brushed two coats of the red on the tea bowl and then brushed a layer of commercial low-fire black over the red.
What I would like to experiment with is adding an opacifier and some magnesium carbonate to this red glaze. I'm hoping to tone-down the translucency a bit with zircopax and create some crawling with the magnesium carbonate. The end result, I hope, will look like a high-fire crawling shino. Will mix up some test glazes this week and will raku fire some more tea bowls onnext Saturday, weather permitting.