Raku

Already when preparing for the creation of a raku piece you have to pay special attention to the requirements of the material, that is clay, and to get the object adapt to the material, to get your action to follow the forces of Nature, the flow of matter and spirit in interaction.
Also the choice of colour is an important means of expression. Even a small amount of colour added can have an unpredictable effect. You never know what the final outcome will be!

Colours arise in the smoke chamber of the firing process, and continue to change when cooling off.

Raku lives. Colours change, and deepen in tone in the course of time.

A natural mysticism: what will happen will happen, as if by magic, without too much human intervention. Once the object has been committed to the fire its fate is out of the artist's hands.

But raku can take your iden even further: the colours and cracked patterns of the surface of the finished product give it a very delicate and refined impression, like the traces of eternal fire, reminding us of eternity, but at the same time of the vanity of all things.

Raku is all this. And more. It is a way to take your art a bit further by means of a philosphy, or in brief, a way to relate to the world.

Pirkko Räntilä