Bowls

The cups are made of fire clay on a casting mold. After a first firing at about 1000 degrees Celsius, they undergo a second firing with a naked Raku technique. Naked Raku is a special firing technique that involves the use of a detaching agent plus alumina as a liquid base to be distributed with a brush all over the surface. After several hours from the first layer, each cup is immersed in the glaze. The cup is finally fired again in a raku oven to a temperature of about 920 degrees. The object, after reaching the right temperature, is extracted from the oven and placed in special steel containers for the essential last phase, the fixing through fumigation. The presence of newsprint and sawdust in exact proportions allows the incandescent object to create combustion inside the bin, to stimulate the fumes that fix themselves to some areas of the cup. Once the object starts to cool down, the glaze undergoes the micro-fractures that are so necessary in this technique to allow sawdust smoke to penetrate them and leave the typical cracked and dotted patterns. Once the object is removed from the bin, it is immediately wetted. The thermal contrast allows the glaze to detach itself and show the effects that characterize this baking technique. The handling of the temperature and the fumigation effect on each object as well as the construction, preparation and first decoration are the elements that provide uniqueness and unrepeatability. Dotted or line effects and the place where the crackle decorations are created depend on variables like the type of clay used, the atmospheric conditions, the temperature and the fumigation time.