Saturday, October 24 · Alpine, Utah · 9:00 AM sharp
Raku. One workshop left in 2026. Twenty spots.
This is the last raku workshop I’m running this year, and it’s in actual sunlight. My parents’ place in Alpine. Gates open at 8:45, the safety meeting starts at 9:00 on the dot, and we’re done somewhere between 2 and 4. You go home smelling like a campfire and holding pots that didn’t exist that morning.
Raku Workshop in Alpine
Saturday, October 24, 2026. Gates open 8:45 AM. Safety meeting 9:00 AM sharp. Done between 2 and 4 PM. Address texted to you before the day.
until the safety meeting starts, and it starts whether you’re there or not.
One spot per checkout. If your spouse is coming, they check out separately with their own name on it. You’ll land in the cart; just finish checking out like anything else on the site.
When
Saturday, October 24
Gates open at 8:45. Safety meeting at 9:00 sharp, and more than ten minutes late means you’ve missed the workshop. I’m not being dramatic. That’s just the rule.
Where
A barn in Alpine
My parents’ property. It’s their home, so the address isn’t going on the internet. I’ll text it to everyone who’s registered the week of.
How long
Until it’s done
Probably 2 to 4 PM. Raku takes exactly as long as raku takes. Everybody stays through the last firing and through cleanup. Everybody.
Who
Current or past members
If you’ve ever been a Clay Hole member, you’re in. Twenty spots, first come first served, and they fill fast.
The one thing people get wrong
Your pots must be bisqued and glazed with raku glazes before you get there
There is no kiln, no glaze, and no time to do any of that at the barn. Start building now. The clay rules, the size limits, and the glaze rules are all further down this page, and yes, you need to read them.
What raku actually is
You pull your pot out of the fire while it’s still glowing. On purpose.
Every other firing you’ve ever done at the studio, you put it on a table, we eventually load a kiln, and an electrical panel babysits it for you.
Raku is the opposite of that.
We use propane kilns to get your pots to almost 2000 degrees… Fast. Then, while they’re still red-hot and visibly moving, we open the lid and lift them out with long tongs. Straight from the fire into a metal can full of newsprint and pine shavings, which catches on contact. Lid slams down. Inside that can the fire burns through every bit of oxygen it can find, and whatever it can’t get from the air, it pulls right out of your glaze.
That’s where the glaze goes copper, or maybe oil-slick, or perhaps turquoise with crackle throughout. That’s where a once-smooth pot comes out looking like it was dug out of a magical shipwreck. It’s chemistry, it’s smoke, it’s a little bit of violence, and you’re holding the finished thing about twenty minutes after you watched it go in the cans (plus a little elbow grease to scrub it).
If you love pottery, you have to experience raku. At least once. You’ll wanna come again, guaranteed, but try it at least once.
Why daytime
Nighttime raku is unforgettable. Daytime raku is when you can actually see what you made.
We all stood in a pasture until 2 AM and then drove home with our eyes held open by pure will. This one is different, and different is anything but worse.
In daylight the glaze does its whole show in real color. You watch the copper flash and shift while you’re scrubbing it, not under a floodlight. You can see your friends’ faces when their lids come off. You get a real lunch. And when the last pot comes out, you’re home in time to eat dinner like a normal person instead of lying awake smelling like a campfire wondering what day it is.
It’s also late October in a field at the foot of a mountain, so it’s going to be pretty darn cold when you park and pretty nice by lunch. More on the clothes situation below.
Night, in August
Pure drama
- Glowing pots, floodlights, and a whole lot of dark.
- Wrapped around 2 AM.
- Hard to see your colors until the next day.
- Unforgettable. Also exhausting.
Day, October 24
Pure pottery
- The kiln still glows in daylight. Don’t worry.
- Done between 2 and 4 PM.
- Every color, every crackle, in real sunlight.
- Cold morning, warm lunch, home for dinner.
How the day goes
Here’s your whole Saturday, from frost to afternoon light
Drag the slider and watch the sky do what it’s going to do that day. The sun comes up over the mountains a little before 8. It’ll probably be in the 40s when you park and the 60s by lunch, because Utah.
8:45 AM · Gates open
Park, unload, find your people
It’s cold. See-your-breath cold, probably. Get your pots out of the car, plant a camp chair somewhere near the kilns, and go introduce yourself to the people you’re about to spend six hours standing shoulder to shoulder with. This is the easy part. Enjoy the easy part.
The 9:00 start is real. The rest is not a schedule. Pots go in across separate rounds, usually one per person per firing, so everybody gets more than one shot at the kiln. Nobody leaves until the last pot is out and the site is clean, because whoever ends up in the final round deserves the same crowd the first round got.
Prepping your pots
Start building now. I mean it. Now.
Every piece you bring has to be made, dried, bisque-fired, and glazed with raku glazes before you pull into that driveway. Back that up from October 24 and you’ll realize it’s basically already September. Somehow it always is.
The raku gods demand that some pots be sacrificed. That’s the deal and it always will be. But most of the pieces we lose out there failed for reasons that got built into them weeks earlier, at the studio, before anybody lit anything. So here are the rules that give your pot the best odds, and the rules that keep twenty people fitting into one day.
Use the grog clays
B-Mix with Grog or Berlin Gray. The grog is what lets a pot go from almost 2000 degrees to a can of burning newspaper without cracking in half. You can use any other clay in the studio, and some people do, but the thermal shock and cracking rate goes up and you’ll have nobody to blame. Bring a grog pot you’d be gutted to lose and a smooth-clay pot you wouldn’t.
Mind the size limits
Up to four tall, skinny pieces, or up to two wider pieces. Combined width of everything you bring stays under 28 inches. Measure each pot at its widest point and add them up. That math is what keeps twenty people fitting into one Saturday.
Build it to survive
Even walls top to bottom. Every seam reinforced with a blended coil. Inside corners rounded off. A foot trimmed to match the walls. Bone dry before bisque. None of that is a guarantee. It just moves you from hoping to reasonably confident, and out there that’s a real difference.
Raku glazes only, one family per pot
Glaze at the studio with the raku glazes I provide. Most are included; the spendy ones carry an upcharge that tops out at $15, and you’ll know which is which. Know what’s on each piece, and never mix brands or families on one pot unless you know they fire to the same temperature. Amaco’s raku glazes are discontinued, so don’t plan around those.
Dip if you’re certified
Eight Laguna raku dipping glazes live at the studio now. Dipping is fast and ridiculously satisfying, and it gets an even coat brushing almost never does. Two catches: they dry slow, so give them real time or a heat gun, and you need the dipping glaze certification to touch them. Same one as our other dipping glazes. Do it this week, not the night before.
Glaze it all before you come
Use your regular class times, or take one extra studio day on top of your membership. There is no glaze, no glazing table, and no time to glaze at the barn. If it’s not glazed when you park, it’s not getting fired. I loathe saying that sentence to somebody’s face, so please don’t make me.
Nobody knows what your pot is going to look like. Not you. Not me. Not the people who made the glaze. Where it sat in the kiln, how fast it came out, which way the wind was blowing, how long the lid stayed on. All of it changes what you get, and none of it repeats. The people who show up wanting one specific result usually go home a little let down. The people who show up for the adventure almost never do.
Not going to have pots ready?
Buy one of mine and skip straight to the fire
Maybe your timing didn’t work out. Maybe you’ve never touched a wheel and you just want a glorious raku vase on your mantel with a story attached. Either way, you can buy a wheel-thrown bisqued piece from me, roughly $10 to $250 depending on the pot.
Ask me at class and I’ll price them out for you. First pick goes in the order people ask. You still glaze it yourself, at the studio, before the 24th. And as with every pot in raku, it is very well thrown and there are absolutely no guarantees.
Pack the car
What you bring, and what I bring
This is the daytime list, and it’s a different animal than the August one. Forget the headlamps and the blankets. You need sunscreen and a hoodie, because late October in Alpine is both seasons in one day.
You bring
The stuff I can’t bring for you
- Your bisqued, glazed pieces. Raku glazes, ready to go straight into a kiln. There is no glazing at the barn. I will keep saying this.
- Your own lunch and drinks. Nothing is provided. Or pitch in on a group order with everyone else. Either way, plan on eating, because you’re going to be out there for six or seven hours.
- A cooler for whatever needs to stay cold. It’s a barn, not a kitchen.
- A water bottle. Standing next to a kiln in the sun dries you out faster than you’d think.
- A camp chair. Technically optional. Practically? Bring one. There’s real waiting between rounds.
- Warm layers for the morning. Hoodie, jacket, beanie, whatever. It’ll probably be in the 40s when you park. You’ll peel layers off by 11 and you’ll be glad you had them at 9.
- Sunscreen, a hat, sunglasses. Full sun, no shade near the kilns, and glowing pots are bright even in daylight.
- Long pants and closed-toe shoes. Required, not a style note. Long sleeves are strongly recommended. Long hair gets tied back and secured.
- A box or some old towels to carry your finished pots home. They’ll still be warm and they’ll still smell like smoke.
- Bug spray. Optional. It’s a field, and October bugs are lazy but not gone.
- A respirator or mask. Optional, most people skip it, but the smoke finds you now and then.
- Extra combustibles to experiment with. Optional. Whatever you bring has to be bone dry. Damp stuff just steams and you get nothing.
I bring
Everything with a flame on it
- Both raku kilns, the propane, the long tongs, the cans, and the whole operation.
- The combustibles. Newsprint, pine shavings, and animal bedding. Plenty of it.
- Every piece of safety gear. Welding gloves, welding aprons, welding sleeves, safety goggles. You don’t buy a single thing.
- Cleanup supplies. Scour pads and Soft Scrub, so you can get the carbon off your pots right there on site.
- India ink, back at the studio. If you want your crackle to read deep black instead of gray, that step happens at The Clay Hole during a regular class, not at the barn.
- The safety meeting, the choreography, and my parents’ patience. One of those three is not unlimited.
No spectators. None. Everyone standing near that kiln has sat through the safety meeting and signed the waiver, and that’s exactly what keeps this whole thing boring in the best possible way.
Safety
Everybody goes home with all their skin
But in all seriousness. The inside of that kiln is almost 2000 degrees. Several people are pulling pots out of it at the same time. That is the part of this I do not joke about.
Every single unload is choreographed and walked through before we ever close the lid. Where you stand. Where your hands go. Who moves first. We have not had an injury at one of these, and the only reason for that is that everyone out there is running the same play. That is why the safety meeting is not optional, and why anybody who misses it cannot participate. Everybody sits through at least one in person, first-timers without exception. People who are certified online and have already been through a meeting can help set up during this one instead of hearing it again, and they still show up on time. Show up late and I cannot let you fire. I have had to say that to people I like.
- Sign the waiver before you come. Every participant, every workshop, even if this is your fourth one. It is checked at the gate.
- Dress the part. Long pants and closed-toe shoes are required. Long sleeves are strongly recommended. Long hair tied back and secured.
- No horseplay, no practical jokes, no joking about safety. Not once. Not as a bit.
- Stay for the whole thing and help clean up. Both are part of the price of admission.
Get certified online
Do the raku certification ahead of time and you can help set up during the safety meeting
There’s an online raku safety certification on the site now. It’s the safety meeting, on your couch, with a quiz at the end. One rule first: everybody sits through at least one safety meeting in person, no matter what. Once you’ve done that, being certified means you can help set up during the next one instead of sitting through it again.
Here’s why I want you to. The meeting runs while two kilns sit cold. If a few certified people who’ve been through one already are unloading cans, laying out gear and getting the combustibles staged while I talk, the first pots go in the minute the meeting ends instead of twenty minutes after. Everybody fires sooner and everybody gets home sooner. You still show up by 8:45, you still sign the waiver, and you still do exactly what I say near the kilns. You just get the option to be useful instead of being an audience.
And if you ever want to help me run one of these, certified is the price of admission. Nobody runs a can without it.
Not certified, or this is your first one? Totally fine. Be in your seat at 9:00 and I’ll cover all of it in person, same as always.
Lunch
You’re going to get hungry standing next to a fire
Bring your own lunch and drinks, or pitch in with everybody on a group order somewhere in the middle of the day. I don’t supply food, and I have no idea what’s open near a barn in Alpine on a Saturday, so plan like nothing is. Throw a cooler in the trunk. I don’t know why I say “throw.” Place it gently. It has your sandwich in it.
The fine print
The stuff that generates the texts
Read these before you buy. Every one of them is a real rule, and every one of them has come up at least once.
Can I get a refund or reschedule?
No refunds, for any reason, and no switching to a future workshop. These fill up, and a refund means somebody else missed out on the spot you’re not using. You’re welcome to sell your spot to another current or past member for what you paid or less. Just tell me at class who’s taking it so I’ve got the right name on the list.
What if it rains or snows?
Light rain? We fire. Dress for it and come anyway. If heavy rain or snow is rolling in, I reschedule and text everybody directly, so keep an eye on your phone that week. It’s late October in Utah, so honestly, it could go either way.
What happens if I’m late?
More than ten minutes past 9:00 and you can’t participate, and there’s no refund. It’s a hard line because the safety meeting is the foundation of the whole day and it cannot be repeated for one person while nineteen others stand around a lit kiln. Give yourself a buffer on the drive. Gates open at 8:45 for exactly this reason.
What if not enough people sign up?
There have to be at least seven registered participants to run the workshop. If fewer than seven register, you’ll get your choice between a full refund or a spot at the next raku workshop. That has never actually happened, but it’s the rule.
Can I leave early?
No. Everybody stays through the last firing and through cleanup. Whoever lands in that final round deserves the same crowd and the same set of hands the first round got. Plan your Saturday evening around a 4 PM finish, not a 2 PM one.
Can I bring someone to watch?
No. Participants only. Everyone on site has sat through the safety meeting and signed the waiver, and adding people outside that circle is exactly how a well-run day stops being one. You might see a guest or two out there with me; those folks have been cleared ahead of time.
How many pots, and how many firings?
Up to four tall skinny pieces or two wider ones, under 28 inches of combined width. Usually one pot per person per firing, so your pieces go in across separate rounds rather than all at once. That way everybody gets the kiln more than once and nobody hogs a round.
Is my pot going to survive?
Maybe. Pots crack. Glazes shift or come out looking nothing like the jar. That’s raku, and it’s the whole point. Use the grog clays, build to the rules further up this page, and bring one piece you’d be genuinely sad to lose and one you wouldn’t. You’ll have a better day either way.
Saturday, October 24 · 9:00 AM
Twenty spots. They fill fast. That’s not a sales line, it’s just twenty spots.
If you’re in, grab a spot, sign the waiver, and go start building pots this week. If you’re not sure, that’s fine too. Spots will be gone either way, and I’ll see you at class.
Questions? Ask me at class. You all know where to find me.