This site was made in 2004
Latest update: 2010
Important: I have chosen not to change this site because I live in Copenhagen, Denmark, since quite some time now. Anyway, this site was to be found at the address TENMOKO.COM earlier, but I have chosen to have a site in my own name.
In the end of the document youŽll find news and valuable links.
"The reason why I decided to make this humble site is quite simple:
I now have the opportunity to comunicate my works and discoveries to others, globally"
History:
During the intense years of learning at pottery-workshops in Denmark, and France, 1972-75, I met an extremely talented Danish potter, Jolyon Lautrup. She was trained in Japan and her master was the Mingei potter in Kyoto, Mr. Tsunezo Arao.
I met her in 1974, and she became my very best friend and fellow potter during a dynamic period of 17 years. She made fabulous pots and glazes! She lived on a small island in Denmark, and I established a pottery outside Markaryd, Sweden, in 1976. She passed away in January 1991 and I was her only student, she often said... She had a broad knowledge according to the Japanese approach to clay and glazes, as well as a great interest, and insight, into the ancient Chinese pottery. She was traditionally trained in Japan in the early and mid 1950Žs, in a period of 3 years.
And so, in that way, with that extremely blessed friendship guidance, I matured as a potter, making "primitive" stoneware in the beginning of my career as a professional, using clay and wood-ashe, as well as straw-ashe and the local clay, as the base material in my first stoneware glazes.
The amazing Potter Jolyon "Jolle" Lautrup in her garden, in 1985
I went on, and now, many years later, I am able to look back on a life as a potter, who has been exploring nearly all raw-materials as well as fireing technics for stoneware, reduction as well as oxidation -and even crystal fireing technics and glazes.
I have invented many stoneware glazes, especially during these intense years between 1976 and 1991, stoneware glazes and technics of nearly all kinds.
However, I have found many "jewels", and extraordinary things, on that road, such as a strange fact, that a very simple and ordinary, or common, or wellknown, stoneware glaze, often referred to as the Cone 8 glaze, or the 40 30 20 10 glaze, really is good enough in order to make remarkable results, that is if you treat it right and put it on the right clay and so on.
Feldspar 40, Quartz 30, Whiting 20, Caolin 10
Feldspar: You should buy all the different Feldspars (alumina silicates) you can get.
Quartz: Quartz and Flint. Fine Sand.
Whiting: Find different Whitings including the Lime the farmers put on the field.
Caolin: China Clay and Pipe Clay, local clay.
Fired at 1260-1280 C.
Tip: Add wood-ashe and more Silica and some Iron and you have a beautiful Temmoku in an electric kiln!
And why all this? In most raw materials there are many inbred, small amounts of oxides. Normally it is referred to as pollution, like: Flint is polluted by Iron, and Quartz is not. But I really see these inbred oxides as something very valuable, extremely valuable, when it comes to making a glaze for stoneware, fired at Cone 8 and above and under reduction. Ashe-glazes in an electric kiln are very much OK as well.
IŽll like to show you some pictures of my glazes and pots -with comments:
Some discoveries, over the years, when it comes to clay, glazes and fireings at 1280 C
Stoneware and porcelain made by Rasmus Rytter
A pot burned in an oil kiln. The reduction/oxidation makes it green, blue-green, gray, yellow and deep red. One single glaze on one single pot.
Heavy temmoku glaze on stoneware. Oil kiln.
Black oil-spot stoneware glaze. Electric kiln.
Stoneware with local gravel and the copper red glaze. Oil kiln.
Magnesia(dolomite) glaze on porcelain. Electric kiln.
Porcelain bowl. Transparent glaze. Celadon. Pale bluish, in this case, because of the clay-body. Oil kiln, reduction/oxidation.
Crystal glaze on stoneware. Electric kiln.
1 ton raw, and dry, stoneware clay, directly from Fyledalen in Skane, Sweden, has arrived! (2004)
My approach to clay and stoneware is a very naked one. It is stripped from sophistication, I hope. In this world of nakedness earthenware has become a high temperature glaze for stoneware. Feldspar is no longer a chemical alumina silicate with K or Na or both or Na and K and Li, but a substance which has brothers and sisters and cousins with different traits, just discover cousin petalite! Silica or quartz has a beautiful brother which is flint. My caolin has younger sisters and brothers, pipe-clay, ball-clay. And calcium, whiting, has different cousins such as dolomite and colemanite. And so on and so forth.
What I am trying to say is that, as a potter, I prefer to go to the root of things emotionally which tends to be the best in order to make an "alive" pot, and that is the intention in my case.
And it has been most wonderful that a stoneware clay, directly from a founding, mixed with soft (rain)water and carefully prepared, by hand, without the sophisticated use of the vacuum knead, showed up to be a rather religious experience! The realization that no human beings had touched or prepared this clay, but me and million years...My bare hands, my mind and Mother Earth.
--And what an agitating clay, it was! So willing to be formed on a wheel. It is magic!
simple earthenware glaze on stoneware
flint and pipeclay glaze, reduction
All for the best,
Rasmus Rytter, ceramist
on
rasmusrytter.com
By the way, both my parents are artists as well. My father, Jorgen Rytter, who passed away in February 2005, is a Danish author. One of his books, Autumn Crocus, was translated from Danish into English in the 1960Žs. Tip: If you seek on "Jorgen Rytter Autumn Crocus" in Google, youŽll be able to buy the book second hand these days, worldwide.
My mother, Mirza Rytter, is a fabulous painter. SheŽs still a very active artist, now 83, and it is joyful to be able to show her fresh and magic world to you in the United States - and elsewhere, everywhere. Please take contact if you are interested in her work of art. I might be able to arrange something.
New! Visit Mirza RytterŽs amazing site: www.mirzarytter.com
If you like Chinese and Japanese pottery, do explore: www.fareastasianart.com or www.japanesepottery.com