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Raku firing is an ancient Japanese ceramic firing technique that has been used since the 16th century and is known to have been practiced by the Zen Buddhist masters.

On the day of firing the bongs, there something is this method that it feel ceremonial. Something very similar to the ritual of rolling the perfect joint, it almost felt otherworldly.
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You could say a zen like energy was around the Dublin Mountains woodland area that day that made these bongs even more special than ever could be imagined.
For this technique of firing to take place, two people are involved in, what almost feels like a performance piece. The pots would be taken out of the kiln while red hot and covered in dried material such as sawdust or feathers.

In this case with the bongs, we used a locally grown dried hemp from the Keadeen mountain farm in South Wicklow. The dried hemp lined a steel bin, it would catch fire when the flaming hot bongs were placed in it. Creating a lowering in oxygen for the bong and, inturn, creating the beautiful, irregular glaze. No two will ever be the same.

Because firing is a ruthless game some of the bongs were repaired using the ancient Japanese technique called Kintsugi. Kintsugi also known as golden joinery, also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold. Which makes for a beautiful feature in itself.