Index
Archive
All 9 essays on the site, grouped by subject and listed with the length of each.
Clay and Body
- What Makes a Clay Body StonewareA clay body is a recipe, not a natural product dug out of the ground ready to use. Understanding the ingredients explains most of what a finished pot does.
- The Marks on the Bottom of a PotThe underside of a pot records more about how it was made than any other surface. Most of what is there is evidence rather than decoration.
At the Wheel
- Throwing a Bowl: The Sequence of MovesThrowing looks like sculpture and is closer to a sequence of fixed operations. Each step exists because the step after it will not work otherwise.
- Setting Up a Small Home StudioA working pottery corner needs less space than most people assume and more attention to dust, water and floor loading than they expect.
Glaze and Fire
- Glaze Colour in Plain LanguageGlaze colour comes from a handful of metal oxides behaving differently in different melts. The same oxide can produce green, brown, red or black without changing.
- Why a Kiln Firing Takes Two DaysNothing in a kiln is in a hurry. Every stage of the schedule exists to let a specific physical or chemical change finish before the next one begins.
Pottery at Home
- Stoneware and the Everyday TableA stoneware bowl and a factory dinner plate are both fired clay, and they behave almost nothing alike once they are in daily use. The difference begins in the kiln.
- Pottery That Survives the OvenMost handmade stoneware can be baked in. The pieces that fail almost always fail for one reason, and it is a reason worth understanding before the dish goes in.
- Caring for Handmade Pottery at HomeHandmade stoneware needs less care than its owners usually assume, and the care it does need is different from what people expect.