A Blog about Ceramic Art and Science
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Ceramic Glazes
How to Convert Kaolin to Calcined Kaolin
If you have too much clay in a glaze recipe, you might have issues with your glaze crawling during the firing. Crawling is where the glaze pulls away from the clay body due to a combination of shrinkage, poor adhesion and high surface tension.
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Understanding Cone 6 – NCECA presentation 2018
On Mar 15, 2018 I gave my first ever NCECA talk. I was part of a panel discussion called Glazes Without Borders,... read more
What You Need to Start Mixing Your Own Ceramic Glazes
Are you ready to start mixing your own glazes? Perhaps you’ve reached the point in your ceramics journey that you want to start understanding the materials you’re working with and what is actually happening when you put your pottery into the kiln.
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How to Normalize a Glaze Recipe
When a recipe adds up to 100%, we can easily compare it to other recipes. This is particularly useful when we have additions like colourants and opacifiers. The base recipe remains constant while the additions are always relative to 100%. It also allows us to look at 2 recipes side by side and compare the amounts of individual materials. But what do we do if our recipe doesn’t add up to 100%?
read moreStudio Processes
How to Convert Kaolin to Calcined Kaolin
If you have too much clay in a glaze recipe, you might have issues with your glaze crawling during the firing. Crawling is where the glaze pulls away from the clay body due to a combination of shrinkage, poor adhesion and high surface tension.
read more
Don’t Skimp on Safety in the Glaze Lab
Most of our glaze materials come to us in their very basic, unprocessed form. They are dug out of the ground, impurities may or may not be removed, they are ground into a fine powder, bagged and shipped to our suppliers. Working with these minerals in their raw state poses some health risks.
read moreCeramic Art
Where Did Your Coffee Cup Come From?
Made by hand. This morning I drank my coffee out of a mug I made at art school in Nelson, British Columbia. Fond memories of an important chapter of my life swirl through my head.
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500 Teapots
I see the teapot form as a 3 dimensional canvas for the ultimate creativity challenge. Sometimes I’ll sketch out a vision before I get started and other times I just go to town making various shapes and then selecting the parts that fit best together.
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10 Valuable Side Effects to Working With Clay
Clay is an exceptional teacher. While I was learning how to make forms on the potter’s wheel, or how to fire my kiln to a perfectly hot cone 6, I was also simultaneously learning some valuable virtues of living a balanced and harmonious life.
read moreDownload a pdf of my Understanding Cone 6 NCECA presentation
Recent Posts
Understanding Glazes: Glaze Colours and Consistency – workshop June 30, 2018
Examine in detail how colourants are affected by flux choice. Use glaze calculation software to …
How to Convert Kaolin to Calcined Kaolin
If you have too much clay in a glaze recipe, you might have issues with …
Understanding Cone 6 – NCECA presentation 2018
Understanding Glazes: How Glazes Work – workshop May 13, 2018
When we understand our materials and how they interact with each other, we can alter …
Where Did Your Coffee Cup Come From?
Made by hand. This morning I drank my coffee out of a mug I made …
500 Teapots
I see the teapot form as a 3 dimensional canvas for the ultimate creativity challenge. …