My ceramics require two firings. The first firing is known as bisque firing, and serves the purpose of merely strengthening the piece for further handling. The second firing occurs in a raku kiln. As I experiment a lot, I fire in four different ways. One of them is called saggar firing, which means firing in sealed containers, which may be made of stoneware, stainless steel or heavy duty aluminum foil. The pieces may be treated with certain chemicals and volatile materials, and are placed in saggars in which chemical reactions create arrays of colors and patterns. Western style raku firing without saggar usually requires either an application of glaze or resist layers in which patterns are drawn. Smoke penetrates through the layers, leaving marks. Finally the resist layers are removed.