RakuArt by Darinka Lapajne
RÁKU means to be happy of the day and enjoy in harmony with people as well as objects.It's a ceramic technique that developed in Japan in 15th century. At first it was meant to be used for making tea cups for the ritual of drinking tea , later on it gained artistic values in the west. Characteristics of this type of ceramics is in special clay components, rich with silicate. Because of this, the ceramics can be taken out of incandescent oven and expose it to the shock of taking oxygen away and cooling it in the water, which enables development of beautiful metallic reflections , that make this ceramic so special and unique.
NAKED RÁKU or painting with smoke. It's a variation of rάku technique, where the surface of an object must be precisely smoothed. The object is then coated with a special ingob and glaze.When the still hot object is taken out of the oven it's exposed to lower reduction and in the end of the procedure all of the coating is removed, so only the naked ceramic remains with magnificent motives and smoked lines.
»TERRE SIGILLATE« is an ancient technique from the times of Minoans. Its about a special ingob, where glazing is not used, instead we take advantage of the micro particles of clay that crystallize good and give the object inpenetrable, shining and satin touch surface.