Blog – Sue McLeod Ceramics

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.

Understanding Cone 6 – NCECA presentation 2018

Ceramic Glazes, NCECA

On Mar 15, 2018 I gave my first ever NCECA talk. I was part of a panel discussion called Glazes Without Borders, moderated by my teacher, Matt Katz. This video is a 20 minute clip of my presentation titled "Understanding Cone 6". My co-presenters Kiara Matos and Peter...

What You Need to Start Mixing Your Own Ceramic Glazes

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.

How to Normalize a Glaze Recipe

Ceramic Glazes

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%?

Studio Processes

How to Convert Kaolin to Calcined Kaolin

Ceramic Glazes, Studio Processes

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.

Don’t Skimp on Safety in the Glaze Lab

Studio Processes

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.

Ceramic Art

Where Did Your Coffee Cup Come From?

Ceramic Art

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.

500 Teapots

Ceramic Art

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.

10 Valuable Side Effects to Working With Clay

Ceramic Art

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.