Ray Travis: Pottery

I was born in Harmony, North Carolina in 1942 and spent most of my youth in Newton. I joined the Navy in 1963 and was lucky enough to spend my whole Navy career in Thurso, Scotland. I’ve been a licensed electrician and worked in the nuclear industry, but my first love has always been art. I’ve been drawing and painting in different media since childhood, but became interested in pottery much later. I moved back to North Carolina about 10 years ago. I took some pottery classes at the Saw Tooth Center in Winston-Salem where I had my first opportunity to experiment with Raku. This year I had a course at the Penland School of Arts to learn how to develop low fire Raku glazes.

For several years I’ve enjoyed making Raku Pottery.

Raku is a type of Japanese Pottery that makes use of fire and smoke to create unusual effects. It was first used in the 16th century to create small bowls for use in the Tea Ceremony. Traditional Raku bowls were molded by hand, fired in a wood-fired kiln, removed red hot and placed in water or left in the open air to cool. Although the basic techniques are still used today, they have been modified by contemporary potter’s worldwide.

Paul Soldner in the 1960s adopted the technique of using a reduction chamber at the end of the firing to compensate the difference in atmosphere between the wood-fired kilns used by the Japanese and the gas-fired kilns we use today. A Reduction Chamber is a container with a lid filled with combustible materials such as shredded paper, straw, leaves etc. The red hot piece of pottery is placed in the container and lid closed. This process will draw out all the oxygen in the container, creating different effects.

I use a gas fired kiln, glazes I’ve developed, commercial low fired glazes and glazes mixed from the recipes of other potters. I fire in a range of 1600° to 2000°, often firing several times, and use shredded paper and or straw for post reduction. The results of this process are unpredictable, providing both rewards and disappointments.

My work is hand built or altered wheel thrown. I sometimes incorporate copper, glass or mica in the pieces. Most of what I do is nonfunctional. The finished Raku piece is porous and does not hold liquid, but I’m working on a method that will produce functional Raku pieces. This is a slow learning process which is never-ending. Because the red hot pottery is cooled quickly, some pieces will shatter and end up in the broken pit. The ones that survive are to be cherished.