Raku Ware

楽焼 / 16th century– / Style / Ceramic Styles

Raku is pottery covered with a lead glaze and fired at a very low temperature, with the piece pulled from the kiln while still hot and left to cool in open air. The glaze never fully levels and the body stays soft and porous, so no two pieces from one firing carry the same surface. The Getty vocabulary lists the Japanese process and the wider technique as two separate entries.

Glaze that pools thickly and crawls to a stop short of the rim / A fine crackle across the whole glazed surface, left by the sudden cooling / Bare foot rings and bases where the soft porous body shows through unglazed / Colour variation that lands in a different place and amount on every piece from one firing

Raku Ware — Hon'ami Kōetsu, white Raku tea bowl named Fujisan, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Hon'ami Kōetsu, white Raku tea bowl named Fujisan, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Black Raku tea bowl, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 ／ Red Raku tea bowl, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Raku Ware — Black Raku tea bowl, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Hon'ami Kōetsu, white Raku tea bowl named Fujisan, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain ／ Black Raku tea bowl, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 ／ Red Raku tea bowl, 17th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0

Dictionary entry

Best used for: Making vessels or ceramic lighting where every piece is expected to come out different · Stepping away from industrial uniformity to keep an object light and warm in the hand
Type: Keep text off the body, with at most a single small mark under the foot.
Composition: Sized for the hand, with an uneven rim and no fixed front, meant to be turned while looked at.
Material: A lead glaze that melts at low heat. The piece is lifted from the kiln with tongs mid firing and cooled in open air, which leaves the body porous.
Caution: Drawing crackle and warping on as surface pattern puts the lines where no stress ever ran, and the result reads as decoration rather than as the record of a firing.
Further study: why the Getty separates raku (pottery) and raku (technique) into two entries / the link between a low firing lead glaze and a body that stays soft and porous / the fact that the tool for lifting a piece from the kiln stands as its own entry as raku tongs

Related entries

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