What really goes into a piece of pottery? I buy the clay, throw it on the wheel, clean, dry the piece to leather hard (days), trim, clean, allow the pieces to dry to bone dry (days to weeks), bisque fire, cool 24 hours, sand the piece, clean, wax the bottom, apply glaze, clean, glaze fire a day, cool again for 24 hours, unload, sand, clean, test for vitrification. Now it's done!  At least a couple of weeks start to finish! 

Glazing and clay are like the Berkshire weather, often unpredictable! I can do the same process 10 times and get ten different results. This makes custom orders VERY tricky!

I make a 10" bowl. I let it dry for a few days to a week. The clay goes from wet, to leather hard, to bone dry. It shrinks. It is bisque fired, and it shrinks more. It is glazed and fired again, and shrinks even more!  By the end, the bowl is about 8.5", a 15% loss of size on average. 

Glazes are not pigments like paint! This means that you can't mix glaze colors like you can paint. Glazes are a chemical mixture that produces colors, and mixing them is not predictable like paint. A dark red glaze can be turquoise when it's fired. I have a favorite glaze that fires muddy greenish brown, another that is white with beige speckles, and another that is dull white. When I put them together, I get a gorgeous turquoise!

If a piece is damp, the water content in the clay boils. When a piece of pottery is drying, it may seem "bone-hard" on the outside, but there might be hidden moisture trapped deep within the dense clay body. When it boils, it can explode and destroy both other pieces and the kiln walls. We can preheat greenware before the bisque firing, this is called candling. So when even one piece in a batch is thick, I'll preheat/candle for 4-24 hours depending on the conditions!

If I bump into a piece that I make and change its shape, I can fix it. But, when I fire it after it's dry, the clay might reshape again into the bumped version, because the particles in clay have a memory! This make things like handles, teapot spouts, and flat plates challenging to make.

It takes 8 to 12 hours to fire a kiln. Then it takes 24 to 36 to cool a kiln enough to open it!  If I need to dry thick pieces to prevent explosions, I might run the kiln on low for 18-24 hours, before I even begin to fire it for the 12 hours.  It's a LONG hard wait!

If you open a kiln too early,  the temperature difference will generate a thermal shock and can crack your pieces!

A big word! A piece becomes waterproof when the clay itself become so melted it becomes "glassified", and watertight. This is called vitrification. Glazes are often porous and do not make a piece waterproof on its own, a piece must be vitrified to hold liquid!

Do your ceramics sing? Singing ceramics! Sometimes the pieces will let out a pinging ring from time to time. We call it "tinking"!  It happens because during cooling, glazes can shrink at a rate that is different than the glaze. When this occurs, the glaze crackles a bit. Sometimes this effect is used intentionally. Sometimes, it hints at a poor glaze/clay fit. Sometimes it just simply sings and effects little consequence. Sometimes you can hear a tink months later!! 

Pottery is as much as science as it is an art. It takes years to learn the chemistry of vitrification and glazing. We potters often depend on commercial providers of clay and glaze to provide some consistency in results. Potters who understand glaze chemistry are truly masters of the trade! 

The Marvelous Reveal! The big reveal is SO much fun!  It's the best part of pottery work. It's spellbinding when we open the kiln, a breathtaking sight to experience the transformation of pieces from muddy dull clay and glaze to functional works of art. It harkens to the forming of the earth-- the volcanics that transform the earth. Magic!