POTRY produces small series and shapes ceramics by hand and bakes them in a handmade oven that heats over a wood fire.
These primitive-looking ceramics are marked by fire, which gives them a unique, raw and sensitive appearance.
In Japan, raku is an integral part of the tea ceremony and has been useful and edible for a very long time. Westerners also use it.
This can be confusing, because however in Europe, there is legislation that designates Raku as non-compliant for food use. Being pieces fired at low temperature, they are slightly porous and therefore considered "unhygienic" because tea, coffee, coloring foods or even fat can leave traces, tints, patina on the object.
The ceramist does not use oxide to give color. It uses only a very basic transparent lead-free enamel called: frit, which melts at 900 degrees. It's a blanket. This transparent enamel develops networks of cracks at the exit of the oven during the thermal shock of the smoking. This is revealed when the smoke passes through it. Which gives this famous cracked effect of Raku.
