Raku Firing Guinea Pig Memorial

I had to travel to Swindon to raku fire the bisque guinea pig, since the only options here are all booked up or the kilns aren’t big enough.

I painted it in raku glazes, but I had no idea how they would turn out, especially because it wasn’t being fired with combustibles other than the guinea pig hair. I was inspired to do black and white colors based on other artists’ raku animals - black things like noses are left unpainted so the wood burns into it, making it black, but I’d have to color those areas black instead, because leaving it unpainted would mean it would just be darker exposed clay.

In retrospect, maybe it would have looked nicer if I had smoothed the surface down and left the surface bare, leaving only the fur marks. But I knew from the beginning I wanted to raku, and I had no idea what resources I’d be able to get a hold of in order to prototype things. In this unit, I’m starting to see the value of prototyping more - but at the same time I’m starting to realize how much money this is eating away at.

A scottie was patrolling the area while I waited for it to fire. During that time, someone else’s piece exploded because it was dropped in the water to cool too soon, and with the air having no where to escape, exploded through the bisque. I took that as a lesson to wait as long as possible until doing that.

Once it came out, the instructor told me to start putting the guinea pig fur as soon as it came out the kiln. The issue with that, though, was it started to just disappear and burn away as I put it on while it was red-hot. Horse hair needs to be put on in the red-hot stage. In my desperation, starting to think guinea pig hair was impossible to use, it finally started to make marks once it was cooled about 1 minute out the kiln. I had about 30 seconds of time to put the guinea pig hair on. I haven’t seen a lot of other artists online or otherwise mention this, or maybe it was obvious, but the finer hair you use to raku fire with, the cooler the pot needs to be.