Tea Bowls
Reflection Essay

This was our very first assignment of this semester. In this assignment we had to throw 50 tea bowls which had to be glazed and raku fired. Tea bowls are used in various cultures for tea ceremonies. Mostly they are used by the Japanese. Tea bowls can be hand built or thrown. Some are heavy and some are light weight.

I found this assignment to be quite interesting as there was an open opportunity to explore different forms. It was up to us the forms we wished to throw. I cannot have very hot tea unlike some people. Therefore, I tried making the bowls in such a way that it had a wide mouth so that the tea cools down faster and is easier to drink. We had an option to alter it in any way we liked, just the form should be a thrown one. I tried making sets of twos and fours so this also became a practice of throwing similar forms. Whereas, in some cases, instead of making foots by trimming on the wheel, I made them through hand building. After making a huge variety of tea bowls, I found out more about how one can improve skills in trimming and tooling. The second major part was the Raku firing of these bowls. Basically Raku firing technique is a Japanese method. However Western Raku techniques are also being used nowadays. Our experience with this type of firing was quite an interesting one.

We first set up the shelves in an open area. After applying a fine layer of grog on the high fire shelves, we placed the bowls and care was being taken that the bowls’ edges did not touch each other because when the glaze melts, it will melt together with the bowl next to it, thus destroying both pieces. A cone pack was also placed at a position where it could be easily viewed from the peep hole on the kiln structure. After the kiln was loaded, a metallic structure lined with ceramic fiber was placed carefully on top of the shelves. The structure had two openings on the bottom end for installing the burners. It took approximately more than an hour to fire the bisqued and glazed pieces. After the cone had bended, it was finally time to take the pots out. It is now that the most interesting process took place. As soon as the upper structure of the kiln was removed, Red hot pieces could be seen. We had arranged for two huge earthenware pots, one half filled with sawdust and one with newspaper shavings. With the help of long metallic tongs, each piece was lifted individually and placed in the huge earthen ware pot. As soon as it was put inside, the shavings caught fire and one person had to fill in it with more shavings. This was a process which had to be carried out quickly. Once all the pieces were taken out from the kiln, the huge pots were covered with wet newspapers to stop the fire inside. After letting the pots stay inside for 5-10 mins, they were taken out individually with tongs and dipped into water. It was after that the raku effect could be seen.

The three types of Glazes we used (we had not made them ourselves) were White glaze, Neela Thotha and Aqua Lustre. Out of the three, the white glaze was not successful as it left only spots on the bowl despite of fine application. Secondly, the glaze aqua luster was also not very successful as it seemed that the glaze had been wiped off from some parts of the bowl even after we applied it finely. Only the Neela thotha glaze worked the best and melted properly. However in some cases, it too produced blotches. Some of my bowls had very exciting effects while some had blotches on them due to the way glaze was applied.

This assignment really helped us discover the technicalities of Raku firing. Various things affected the raku process. Among them one was whether conditions which in turn affected the oxidation or reduction on the bowls. Another was application of glaze. After a series of 3-4 firings, we concluded that glaze application should be thin and completely dry before being put inside the kiln, otherwise wet glaze starts flaking off thus producing blotches.