Pottery & Ceramics

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NativeTech: Native American Technology and Art
Pottery & Clay Pottery in Southern New England Chronology of southern New England Pottery A Catalogue of Reconstructed Pottery Designs Preparing Clay	Temper Mixed into Clay Making a Clay Pot Tools Used to Decorate Pottery Firing Pottery A Photographic Tour of Firing Pottery

SideStoke This site is concerned with anagamas and other woodfired kilns, woodfired pots and woodfirers themselves.

Wood-fired Stoneware from Shigaraki Shigaraki is situated in the heart of the Japanese Islands, and is one of the six oldest pottery centers in Japan. The work featured here comes primarily from Anagama style kilns, the oldest style kiln in Japan. by Shiho Kanzaki Plan of Anagama | Virtual Exhibition |

Anagama Mama, Bonita Cohn Woodfired stoneware ceramics and photographs of four different anagama and noburigama wood burning kilns in full flame, Bonita Cohn potter.

Carol and Arthur Rosser Wood-fire Potters Location: Australia - Deals with the ceramic activities of Australian potters Carol and Arthur Rosser who fire an anagama and wood-fired salt kilns. They have a good list of links to other Wood-fire web sites click here to go directly to thier links page.

The Pottery Studio is a knowledge base for collectors, students and lovers of all kinds of pottery. It's a large site, over 6,500 pages - you won't see it all in one sitting - so bookmark it and come back again and again. You will always be welcome.

Basic/General

Pottery Forming

Caveman to Chemist Projects: Pottery Fire, as I have said, is probably the most important technology to be mastered by humans. But in order to proceed in the use of fire, we need containers that can withstand the heat. Wood containers burn; metal and glass containers melt. Ceramic materials are the ones best suited to high-temperature work. Ceramics predated and were used in the development of metal and glass.

Southern California Pottery by Paul D. Campbell: Pottery is the miracle of turning raw earth into sophisticated vessels. Pottery-making was not universal in the Californias. Boiling with hot stones in a container of animal skin, a tightly woven basket, or a pecked and ground stone bowl was the lot of most. Except for some archaic clay boiling stones, figurines and crude crockery, a well-developed ceramic tradition only arrived in California from the east during the last one thousand years...

Pottery, clay that is chemically altered and permanently hardened by firing in a kiln. The nature and type of pottery, or ceramics (Greek keramos, “potter's clay”), is determined by the composition of the clay and the way it is prepared; the temperature at which it is fired; and the glazes used. Nice article on MSN Encarta.

"Pottery" by B.Levick. Lengthy, generalized but interesting article on old world pottery methods & styles.

Campfire Pottery Submitted by Jim Speirs, exerpts from John Richey's article "Campfire Pottery", The Leader, April 1999. "It's easier than you think and a natural outlet for a lot of creative and physical energy," says Stephen Plant of The Pottery Plant. "Earth, air, fire, water, and imagination are the ingredients, and you can almost always find them anywhere."

Pottery Making Pottery, one of the first synthetics created by man, is created by a dehydration process. The process in which clay is heated and the water found naturally in it is removed, causes an irreversible transformation. In other words the clay is not simply dehydrated but it become a different product all together. This new product is ceramics, which are unchanged by the presence of water because of absence of water of plasticity.

HOW PUEBLO POTTERY IS MADE Follow the step-by-step process of creating pueblo pottery

The Art of Pottery Making

Stoves, Kilns & Firing

Ceramic for Stoves Part 3a- Test firing local clays- primitive kilns by Richard Boyt, May 2003: Again, greetings from Pottershop Holler (old maps). Much of this was written under a week of tornado watches and warnings, but at this moment the sun is brilliant and the sky a deep blue even to the horizons... See also: Ceramics for Cookstoves 1: Finding Clay (May 2003) 2: Testing Unfired (green) Clay, 3b: Test Firing Local Clays- Re-discovery of a "Natural" Kiln (June 2003), 4: Drying Formed Clay Shapes, 5a- Making Samples for Testing AND Practical Tips For Potters Making Improved Cooking Stoves Part 1-- Forward and Introduction, Part 2-- Finding and Selecting the Clay, Part 3-- Testing the Clay For Cooking Stoves, Part 4-- Materials That Can be Added to Make a Better Mixture AND FINALLY The Ten Can Stove, built by Richard Boyt (Feb 16,98)

Pit Firing Techniques with Mark Lancet (ClayStation) A comprehensive explanation of the pit-firing process, written by Andy Clift.

Pottery_Kilns & Pottery Kiln

Pit Fire! (Nine Stones) Pictures taken at a pit firing on the beach in San Francisco, California. They show the basic steps in a primitive pit firing and tell you what to do in each step.

Pit Fire (Mark L. Hessenflow) photos from a group pottery firing coordinated by Kathryn McBride.

Primitive Surfaces, by Tony Nan (Ceramics web) Surfacing and firing info. Also available HERE

Firing Native American Pottery (Native American Technology and Art)

A photographic tour of firing Native American pottery (Native American Technology and Art)

Woodfired kilns (Don Clarke) Step-by-step process of building and firing a twin-arch, noborigama woodfired kiln.

Australian Wood-Fire Survey 1996 Strathnairn Ceramics Association Inc. In conjunction with the 8th National Ceramics Conference, International Connections, Canberra, July 1996 Introduction by Dr Owen Rye

Your First Wood Kiln, Built in an Hour, l Fired in Three Brian Gartside - Article originally from NZ potery 1983

Wood Kiln Design and Construction In July of 2002 a group of University of Wisconsin River Falls students participated in a Wool Kiln Design and Construction course. See also: Wood-kiln Construction Gallery & Kiln Construction Building the Noborigama 250

Black Firing Tips and Tricks There's more to black-firing than just throwing a few bags of sugar into some old kiln! Get some great hints on black firing right here.

"Experimental Pottery Kiln" Article by Linda Cooper on old world method of building & firing a pottery kiln.

Pit Firing The traditional technique of pit firing is an age-old but simple firing technique using combustible fuels, that you can try out in your own back yard.

Experimental Pottery Kilns Through Anglo-Saxon & Viking Crafts - Regia Anglorum Publications: The first kiln that we tried was a relatively crude type, using the very minimum of materials for construction, considering the adverse conditions we had quite encouraging results.

Special Techniques

WOODASH This is an article on WOOD ASH as a base for glazemaking and textured surfaces. I've been trying to remember the beginning to a joke or riddle that ends, "No, but Edward Woodward would!" - it would have made a good title.

TERRA SIGILLATA NEAR ENOUGH Is GOOD ENOUGH FOR ANYTHING BUT TERRA SIGILLATA - I've never hesitated to 'round off' numbers in borrowed glaze recipes and I've never seen the point in decimal places either except as a pun. It doesn't seem to make much difference if it's five percent one way or another with the major materials.

Recording the Flame: Woodfired Pottery Quicktime movie This documentary, based on the 2nd International Woodfire Conference, provides an exceptional educational opportunity to enlighten and inform the general public about this little-known tradition of pottery.

Glazes

Pottery Glazes

FREE AND EASY GLAZING Always looking for an easy way ,I began to do three things that changed my whole approach to glazing...

CRAWL AND CRACKLE GLAZES Too Much,Too thick,Too Easy - crawl,crack,curl - published in "Ceramic review" (UK) February 1996 Crawled glazes offer the possibility of attractive textured surfaces, which as New Zealand potter Brian Gartside explains, can 505 achieved relatively easily. Photographs by author.

SATURATED IRON GLAZE RICH IRONY... I opened my Dictionary of Cliches before I started this sentence It fell open at HOW NOW BROWN COW? -quite appropriate and quite a coincidence. It would havemade a good title...

BASIC STONEWARE GLAZE This a very good natured glaze that can perform well at different temperatures....the variations listed give wide control over its character. The minerals listed are sourced from New Zealand and Australia but substitutions can be tried in other countries

RAKU AND LOWFIRE SALT The flame is thick, slow, and smoky, filling half the chamber. It's easy to see which is the hottest part of the kiln-the pieces in the direct flame are warping gently towards the flame...

RAKU GLAZES, SALT AND SMOKE Four buckets of 80:20 glaze(see below) had been prepared, three of them with added stains. People gathered round dabbing and slopping glaze onto their bisque pots. Then it became frenetic...........

Crystalline Ceramics A fairly comprehensive resource on crystalline glazes. With recipes and other info. Also includes a Bulletin Board.

Materials

Pottery Clay

PAPER CLAY Mix what with clay? an early article about paperclay,1993 Cellulose fibre is a hollow tube-Iike structure which is an essential part of all plants and trees. It plays an important part in photosynthesis and osmosis. It has an amazing ability to syphon moisture into itself, acting like a sponge. Different sources give a variety of fibres, the length and size of which depend on the type of tree or plant producing them.

MAKING CLAY TEXTURE A long time ago someone said "Clay ought to be cleaner and have no soil in it, or sand, or spiky bits of any kind. So people invented machines that would really pulverize this earthy material into submission. It became possible to wash, sieve and purify it to make it more perfect...

Tools & Equipment

WOOD KILN FOR BEGINNERS Kind of a cartoon, but you'll get the idea. See if you can find the third page...

Forums

Potter's Pavilion Discussion group for wheel thrown and hand built pottery.

Magazines

Pottery Making Illustrated is a magazine just for potters - amateur or professional, student or teacher. Each issue contains well-illustrated, easy-to-understand information on hand building, throwing, glazing and firing techniques, as well as step-by-step projects and information on tools, equipment and safety!

The Log Book is the international publication for woodfirers and those interested in woodfiring and wood-fired ceramics, be they professional, educator, student, or enthusiast.

Other

Cone Temperature Chart This chart will give you a comparison between Orton Cones and Fahrenheit and Celsius temperatures.

Glossary of Ceramic Terms Edited by Will Levi Marshall.

Glossary of Pottery and Porcelain A comprehensive glossary from A-Z.

POTTERS’ IMPRESSIONS OF OAXACA by Paula Sibrack Marian: This is the sixth time that David Furman, art professor at Pitzer College, Claremont, CA has enticed a group of NCECA conference [attendees] to leave home days early and become turistas in Mexico. An old hand at Latin American travel, David has a knack for finding authentic, non-touristy hotels, reasonable air fares, and locations that ceramic artists can’t help but respond to...

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