Articles about pottery and ceramics that you won't find anywhere else.
Are you always searching for pottery tips and inspiration? Me to! In fact I regularly scan a few hundred pottery blogs to learn more about pottery. You can see the best stuff that I find each month in the Clay Blog Review.
Below is a small sample of the pottery tips, videos and techniques from the pottery blogs in the past 12 months.
[Read more…]So, if you’ve read the first article in this series about blogging, maybe you’ve decided to start your own pottery blog. Or maybe you want to refine your current blogging efforts. Fantastic! But now what? Where do you begin?
You can always just jump in and learn as you go. But it may help to organize your thoughts and come up with a plan. Especially if you hope to grow a following or sell products. Below you will find some things to think about when starting a pottery blog. These should be considered loose guidelines and not rules set in fired stoneware.
Have you ever thought about starting a pottery blog? If so, you are in the perfect spot! This is the first article in a series of posts about pottery blogging. We’ll cover an introduction to blogging here and later we will look at how to plan, set up, use, and promote a pottery blog.
You can recycle clay, or reclaim clay, so it can be used again. Many potters keep their non contaminated (21) clay scraps from trimming, broken greenware, or old throwing slurry (3) to recycle and reuse. As long as clay has not been fired it can be recycled (10, 21). It can be a time consuming process (2), physically demanding and take up a lot of space (14) but it doesn’t have to be an unreasonable amount of work (3). Plus, recycled clay is clay that you don’t have to buy! As the old saying goes, there are about as many ways to recycle clay as there are potters. Many variations are presented below. Find the process that suits your situation the best. Of course, if you have access to a pugmill, it can be used to easily recycle clay. (20).
The most notable hazard to be conscience of when you recycle clay is breathing clay dust from dry clay (11). To be safe, wear a good quality respirator mask and eye protection (14). Also be careful when lifting large amounts of clay to be sure not to strain any part of your body.
[Read more…]Mixing a glaze powder with water allows you to apply the glaze to bisque ware quickly and easily. It is a relatively simple process. The main steps, in more detail below, include: measuring water, mixing the glaze powder with the water, sieving, adjusting viscosity or density and letting the glaze sit for a while before it is applied. There are many variations and some people execute these steps in a different order.
First of all, follow the instructions that came with the glaze if you are using a premixed powder. Many commercially prepared glazes can now be purchased as dry powder in 10, 25, or 50lb increments. Generally, dry glaze powder is formulated for dipping and pouring, while premixed liquid glazes are formulated for brushing (3,20). The following instructions assume that you have a glaze in dry powder form which is mixed well and ready to be mixed with water. If you are not using a whole batch of premixed powder make sure it is mixed well before taking part of the powder to mix with water. Some of the glaze ingredients might settle to the bottom of the container during transport (20). There are also many suggestions for keeping the glaze suspended in water or improving brushability. These suggestions include Flocs (7), bentonite (3,11), epsom salt (13), brushing medium (10), CMC (11) and Macaloid (13).
