A vapour mediated mark

In a related kiln phenomenon, called ‘fashing’, objects are subject to diferent amounts of ash in a fame fred kiln (because the fames move around the objects in an uneven way). A very specifc example of this is ‘chrome fashing’when the presence of a chrome-oxide glazed object next to a tin-oxide glazed one will cause a localised reaction in the white tin glaze, turning it pink.

Direct echoes to the photographic process exist here too. Properties of the referent are transferred from one locus to another and a chemical reaction takes place at this new locus to create an image copy. The transferrent in photography is light, in raku and ‘fashing’ it is heat or vapour moving by heat convection.

There is a potential for distortion during the ‘displacement’ in the fashing process however. The gap between the object and the locus of the index causes the image to be more or less difuse - but such distortion is much the same as that which results in a blurred, out of focus photograph. This gap also means that a disruption or difraction of the transferring rays can take place - the movement of air in the kiln can swirl the smoke and move it. Again though, this is no diferent to a photograph taken through a difractive medium such as water or glass in which the light rays are bent and the resultant image distorted. Neither of these displacements constitute the introduction of a code or syntax, (mediated as they are only by chance and the physics of nature). Flash marks on ceramic surfaces, like blurred photographs, despite their distortion still meet our criteria for an index.

The transferring force in fashing (the vapour) is not, as light is, a ray of energy. It is matter in gas form (smoke - foating particles of carbon or chrome). It is a material moving through space rather than a wave of electromagnetic energy. It is not a property of the referent being transferred, but instead of an actual piece of the referent moving to the new locus, there to react with it materially.