Raku-less Raku Test Using Aluminum

This is a short post showing why I am taking a trip outside of London to do a real raku firing…

I cut the ends of my hair a few weeks ago and kept it because I knew I wanted to test how softer hair (as opposed to horse hair) fires on raku. Problem is there’s no raku kiln at school, so I took a chance with my hair to see if it would leave any mark in a regular kiln firing. While I was at it, I tested adding different amount of bone ash into raku clay, as the project I’m doing involves using pet ash & pet hair in ceramics as a memorial.

From left to right is the most to the least bone ash; guinea pig 6%, bunny 3%, chick 1%, bowl 0%. I just wedged it into the clay.

At this point, there seemed to be no difference in them from the bone ash, but later (I didn’t take pictures yet) when fired at hire temperature, the more bone ash was in it, the darker it was; the 6% was like a sugar cookie put in the oven a bit too long; dark on the edges, but it looked rather nice.

I smothered them in different amounts of hair and the same glaze, covered them in aluminum foil and hoped for the best.

Really, all this method does it make it really hard to clean your finished work, because the aluminum kinda dusts off as you touches it and makes a big mess, and bits of it seemed to melt into the clay itself. As you might be able to guess, no amount of hair whatsoever made any effect on any of the pots.

Oh well