Contemporary Raku (eBook)

Stephen Murfitt (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
176 Seiten
The Crowood Press (Verlag)
978-1-78500-994-5 (ISBN)

Infos

Contemporary Raku is a complete guide to this exciting, dramatic and beautiful art form. It explains the making, glazing and firing methods employed for producing Raku-ware, and features contributions and insights from leading makers. Recognizing the deeper values of the practice, the book also considers the influences and sources of inspiration behind the work of these makers. It introduces the necessary tools and equipment, and advises on essential health and safety measures. It explains how to make vessels and forms with step-by-step photo sequences. Recipes for clay bodies and glazes for the beginner and the more experienced maker are included. Details are given on the Raku-firing process and the range of kilns used. Finally, it explores the practice of 'Naked Raku'. With over 300 illustrations, it is a stunning and detailed account to this magical process.

Raku has been Stephen Murfitt's main passion for the last forty years. He is a recognized authority on the process and continues to explore its infinite possibilities from his studio in Cambridgeshire.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

R aku is a Japanese word that has been freely interpreted in the West as ‘enjoyment’.

The ‘enjoyment’ is generated from the ‘full-on’ involvement and total engagement with an exploration of ideas interlocked with a magical process! It is a constant search for an elusive unknown perfect outcome. The famous potter Hans Coper once compared his work to that of a ‘demented piano tuner, trying to approximate a phantom pitch’. Many contemporary makers are engaged in a way of working which could be defined as ‘Raku’, a fusion of ideas and process that continues to develop and evolve. In this book, the concept and practice of Raku is revealed through insights provided by some leading practitioners, informed by the first-hand experience that is constantly increasing their knowledge.

Stephen Murfitt, tall textured vessels; height 60cm.

Pottery is as tactile as it is visual and should be seen and experienced in the round. Manipulating clay and making is an extremely tactile experience. As the forms slowly develop, intuitive decisions are made. A change of direction here, a seam added there, more scraping and refining required. Developments that take place during the making process are influenced and informed by ideas that have been developed from experiences absorbed and observations made over many years.

Visual connections are noted, memories of museum visits and ancient pots revisited. Sketchbooks are referred to, and even older and undeveloped ideas remembered. The anticipation of the firing to come builds as recipes are adjusted and pieces are glazed, with some new combinations of colour to be explored.

The first piece is gently placed in the kiln and as the temperature slowly rises, the excitement and expectations increase. The glaze has matured and the vessel is carefully removed from the kiln with metal tongs and placed onto a pre-prepared bed of sawdust and wood shavings. Flames and smoke erupt as more shavings are added and the lid is put on the bin. The hours slip slowly by, the lid is removed, with a combination of expectations, doubts, anxiety and enjoyment, the form (still very hot) is slowly revealed. That fundamental desire to create, the total involvement with the drama of the firing process and the hopeful anticipation for the potential of the outcome, are all part of the Raku experience.

The earliest Raku was produced in Japan around 500 years ago, and has been greatly developed since those early beginnings to become the exciting and constantly evolving practice used by many leading makers of ceramics today.

As with most creative processes, there is never a right or wrong way to do things. There will only be ways which work for the many individual and inventive makers currently involved with a particular process. Experimentation is the key to progress in all creative fields, and for me personally, each firing is an experiment! The results from the kiln will often indicate another focus for the next firing. This will usually involve further developments being made to forms and surfaces.

THE ORIGINS OF RAKU

Raku has its origins in the sixteenth-century tea ceremonies of Japan. The greatest of the tea masters was Seno-Riyku (1522–91). He established the concept of ‘Wabi’, which translates as ‘austerity’ or ‘simplicity’.

Rikyu commissioned Chōjirō to make Raku ware which he felt best represented the idea of ‘Wabi’ and was most fitting for tea ceremony use. Usually these were ‘pinched and hand-made simple bowl forms’, often with a subdued glaze of shades of grey through to black.

Japanese Raku tea bowls attributed to Raku Sonyu and Raku Chongu; 11.4cm and 12.4cm diameter. Toshiba Gallery of Japanese Art, V&A. (PHOTO: CERAMIC REVIEW)

Sebastian Blackie was my tutor at Farnham and later succeeded Henry Hammond as Head of the Ceramics Department. Sebastian went on to become a Professor of Ceramics for the MA course at Derby College. Sebastian here provides an insight into the development of Oribe ware and how this relates to the contemporary approach to Raku.

Since 1996, Gifu Prefecture in Japan have offered a ceramic award. It is named after the warrior and tea master Futura Oribe who inspired a new and distinctive style of ceramics. The award is for innovation, its purpose to spread ‘Oribe-ism’, its ‘spirit’ rather than the shapes, glazes and decoration that emerged in an explosion of creativity over a few short years in the late sixteenth century before settling into a rigid set of forms known as Oribe ware over the next 400 years. The ‘spirit’ of Oribe seems more about spontaneity, creativity and play than technique or style.

I do not consider myself as making Raku but I accept that my potting might, in a similar way to ‘Oribe-ism’ be in the ‘spirit’ of Raku, something that involves performance as well as product, an approach that plays with process and sees the firing as making a significant creative contribution to the production of the work. Raku is individualistic and clearly speaks of values far from that of industry or contemporary consumer culture. It is about recognizing and accepting what is given rather than imposing. It might then be best understood as a philosophical idea in material form embracing any process that elucidates similar ideas.

It was Bernard Leach who introduced the concept of Raku to the West. His famous Potter’s Book contains a description of a garden party in Tokyo in 1911. This included a tea ceremony and participation in a Raku firing, which was Bernard’s first pottery experience.

Raku soon became known in the West as a process in which pots are rapidly fired, and removed from the kiln when glowing red-hot. A more recent Western development was to place the glowing pot into a metal bin or pit which contained combustible materials, creating many colours, textures and metallic lustres. This became known as post-firing reduction and involved the restriction of oxygen inside a reduction chamber, usually a metal bin. This often created some striking and dramatic surface effects.

Raku has evolved into the exciting and challenging process now being explored by contemporary potters using many varied and individual approaches.

PAUL SOLDNER

The Raku process was explored and developed by the American artist and potter Paul Soldner during the 1960s. His strong sculptural pieces (often thrown and altered) were decorated using engobes and metal oxides, and expressed Soldner’s intuitive feeling for the affinity of form and decoration. It was Soldner’s approach to the Raku process that made a huge impact on the work of potters in the West. Here Sebastian Blackie gives an account of his first-hand experience of Paul Soldner and his approach to Raku.

I first met Soldner in the autumn of 1981. I had heard he was coming over from the USA to work at the art school in Aix-en-Provence with whom my college had an exchange programme. He gave us a two- or three-day workshop performance that included demonstrating how he made various forms he had evolved over the years. Work was forced dried and bisque-fired overnight, then decorated and glazed and fired in a kiln he built on the spot. At some point he fitted in a slide show, with Q&A session as well. It was an astonishing performance done with great calm and ease and timed to perfection. A month or so later I was invited to attend his French performance and, released from the obligations of host, had the opportunity to compare the two events. Later that term on a cold, grey November day I collected Michael Cardew from London who gave an inspirational talk to the same group of students. I felt we were offering an education.

It was clear that for Soldner, Raku was not just about a type of firing but about an attitude towards the whole process of making, a way of thinking. For example he threw a very squat, fat, bottle-like form with a closed spout. When leather hard this was inverted so that the spout became a foot and the former base broken off to give a jagged rim to produce a vessel that roughly equated to a bowl. His working method was a series of questions: what is a bowl, what is a foot, what is a rim and what if I do it this way not that way? Convention dictates that glaze is weighed dry and mixed wet; Soldner measured his recipes by volume and mixed ingredients dry in a bag. I do not think it made much difference to the result but illustrates his deconstruction and rethinking of each element of the process.

He told us that when he went to Japan he learnt that only the Raku family produced Raku and that removing the red-hot pots from the kiln and carbonizing them in combustibles was a Western process, something he claimed to be the first to do. It begs the question what is Raku? One way to look at it is comparing the students of Soldner with those of Cardew. The students of Soldner demonstrated a diversity of style, methods, and materials while the students of Cardew proved to be remarkably similar. Raku could then be understood as a particular form of freedom or perhaps lack of inhibition. Soldner’s approach is clearly informed by the West Coast beat generation and hippy attitudes, free love and free thought. His time with Voulkos at Otis was a huge influence, with its emphasis on learning through making and experiment.

Paul Soldner, pot form, approx. 36cm tall. (PHOTO: STEPHEN BRAYNE, CERAMIC REVIEW)

Paul Soldner piece made at Aberystwyth, showing both sides. (PHOTO: DAVID ROBERTS)

Soldner encouraged us to take risks but it is a relative term. In 1995...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.1.2022
• Verlagsort: London
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Heimwerken / Do it yourself
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Freizeit / Hobby ► Kreatives Gestalten
• Schlagworte: Artist • bernard leach • carbonisation • Ceramics • clay • coiled • Crackle • Cup • Flame • Form • glaze • hand-built • Idea • Inspiration • instruction • Japan • Japanese • kiln • Lustre • Maker • naked raku • Potter’s Bible • Pottery • Project • Raku • reduction • smoke • texture • thrown • Tokyo • unglazed ware • Vase • Vessel
• ISBN-10: 1-78500-994-X / 178500994X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-78500-994-5 / 9781785009945