Exhibition time!

I joined the Anglian Potters primarily as a place where I could meet other potters and geek out about nerdy clay things, but one of the things they encourage you to do is to take part in some of their exhibitions. They happen all over East Anglia and even though I have a little bit of imposter syndrome, I have again pushed myself to get a little selection of pots together to put forward for their Norwich Spring exhibition that takes place in the Undercroft Gallery in the centre of Norwich.

Last year I got given a Raku kiln as a birthday present – best present ever – and although it took me awhile to get all the other bits together, propane, sawdust, reduction bin, when the call came round for who wanted to be a part of the Spring Anglian Potter exhibition, I knew what I wanted to make!

Raku is one of the most exciting processes in pottery making, after a normal electric kiln bisque fire, you can glaze, fire up to 1000 degrees Celsius and be handling the pot within just a few hours and the gorgeous crackle that you can get – with some good luck – is a fabulous reward.

I love the typical big black spiderweb of cracks that Raku and it’s special glazes can achieve on the outside surface of ceramics and after a successful first firing of my kiln back in November, I expanded some of the shapes to make little sets of cobalt, yellow, pink and the traditional ‘white’ crackle. (It’s actually not ‘white’ crackle on my pots, the clay is white, the glaze is transparent and the crackle shows up in the carbon reduction process.)