New raku pieces

I did the initial firing yesterday, then this morning I did the glazing, and I did a couple of glaze firings this afternoon.

Firing raku is always a bit like Christmas morning to me...you know it's going to be fun, but you never quite know what you're going to get. Here are a couple of pics of the finished pieces. These pics have miniature vases and jars, all of which are under 1 inch in size:




This shows the scale of one piece:


I also made some raku beads, pendants, and other small things. (My kiln is quite small.) I have the feeling if I were doing large raku pieces here, it would alarm the neighbors, so it's just as well that I'm limited to small pieces right now. :)

It's very challenging to do raku pieces on this scale. I challenged myself to make these as small as I could, and this is the result! It can be very difficult to remove something the size of a pea from the kiln and not drop it. It may be small, but it's still at 2,000 degrees F and will ignite anything it lands on! The lid for the smallest jar is about the size of a lentil, to give you an idea just how tiny these are.

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