... and Blending

I should probably explain, if I haven't yet - raku in Japan comes in two basic forms - red, and black. There's an earlier post with pictures of work from the raku workshop, which shows samples of each if you want to see. Or of course you can wait until I fire next week! The red style comes from the color of the clay, which is actually more of a yellow color prior to firing, and somewhat more orange after firing. It is used with a sometimes milky but mostly clear crackle glaze. The black is actually built with a white clay, then covered with a glossy black glaze. Prior to firing, the white clay actually looks rather gray.

Most of the pieces I've been creating have been built using either the red or the white clay, sometimes with both clays in the same piece, as you may have noticed from the pictures. So far, I've been keeping the two clays separate - even if I use them within the same piece, I'll use one color for one vessel, another color for the other vessel. For those, I am planning to use the traditional glazes, so one vessel will be black, the other red. However, using these two clays together also gave me another idea. I've seen some ceramic work here in Japan that utilizes different colored clays kneeded together and then thrown, so the finished piece has swirls of different colors. Usually I've seen this on teapots, or teacups, or the like. For awhile I have thought of trying something like that, but colored clays are generally expensive because the materials used as colorants are expensive, plus I don't throw as often anymore. However, that did get me to think about further integrating these two raku clays. The crackle glaze used here would probably look good on the white clay (very similar to what I do in America, I think) or even the green clay, for that matter. So, on one particular piece I'm currently working on, I've intentionally let the red and white clays blend between the two vessels, and I'm planning to use the crackle glaze on the whole piece. I think it should be an interesting effect. Here is how it looks so far:

I coil build all of my current work, adding a coil of clay one layer at a time and then blending it down into the already existing pot wall. So, when I am building two connected vessels with different clays, I usually coil each one up separately, without blending the clays except where they meet. This time, though, I intentionally made the coils long enough that they would occasionally overlap onto the other vessel. The process of blending the layers together and then smoothing them out caused some really interesting patterns... I am quite anxious to see how this one turns out!