Raku on Silver
- Details
- Parent Category: Technical Articles from Journal Back Copies
- Category: Technical Articles 2005
Dorothy Cockrell
When Jeanne Werge-Hartley was preparing her book on enamelling on precious metals, she asked if I had ever done raku on silver. Raku is a high firing technique and sterling silver melts around 893°C (1640°F), so the answer was "no". However, the result of Jeanne's question was a series of tests on scraps of various types of silver and a variety of fluxes. (At that time I was not using copper bearing enamels for raku firing because thin flux on copper produced interesting effects by itself.)
They are in the experimental chapter of her book.
From these experiments, it became clear that fine silver and PMC gave nothing to the flux to produce colour or lustre. Sterling silver, with its copper content, did. To prove the technique could produce a wearable piece I made a pendant with sterling silver, T232 flux, T600 Finishing flux, Soyer 518 Super Soft flux and a bit of gold leaf. The 3 soft fluxes gave green, turquoise, ochre and brownish colours.
