Each piece of art is uniquely made by Mark James who specializes in copper-glazed raku pottery.
This involves firing the glazed piece up to 1000 degrees Celsius and removed at this point (red hot) and placed in a bed of shredded paper which ignites. Sawdust is sprinkled over which also ignites then an inverted drum is lowered to exclude oxygen and the reduced atmosphere reacts with the copper glaze.
This causes interesting and often beautiful colour and pattern variations to the copper base glaze. This is fairly unpredictable which is part of the attraction of this type of firing to me, as no two pieces will be the same. Often the process has to be repeated several times until the desirable result is reached.
Handmade on the West Coast of New Zealand by Mark James