Anyone else work with pottery or ceramics?

[Shovel]

I've just started a pottery class, and I'm having quite a bit of fun with it. I'll post pics when I can. I've been doing handbuilding (slabs, coils) and have just started the wheel. I was just wondering whether anyone else has tried it. (not sure how bushcrafty it is though).

 

[Toddy]

Me

Clay is fascinating stuff and it's amazing what we can make with it

Every kind of artisan firing under the sun, and they all alter the final pot Fascinating stuff.

Have you tried digging up your own clay ? that's bushcrafty enough We're on good clay here, Lanarkshire blue clay. It's not unknown for me to pester the men digging up the roads for dods of the stuff
Son2 cringes in horror as I brazenly ask them if they'll fill a bucket with it for me
That said, anywhere you see cracked ground when it's dry, then you've a chance of finding clay.

Hear ? have a try at a pot that'll hold a candle on a post. Make the pot and let it dry out really well, fill it with wax or fat and a wick ( or use a pinecone) and set it alight. The heat from the burning wax/fat doesn't quite ceramicise the pot, but it does soft fire it, especially if you use it again and again.

atb,
Toddy

 

[xylaria]

I fiddled about with blue marl I got from digging in my alotment in stoke on trent. I sort of didn't get any further than standing a big lump in bucket of rain water washing it until it was slip and then drying it in the sun. The single attempt at dipping a cup in salt water and putting it in the fire resulted in the cup disapearing in the flames. I made whattle and daub without the poo as well.

It has took several thousand years to delvelop the skills that are in modern pottery class , you should be more sucessful reverse engineering pottery than I was reinventing it.

 

[Toddy]

A lot of the pottery in the UK is what we call rotten pot. Basically it's really, really, hard to dry out our pottery well enough to fire it successfully.
Make a pot and keep it beside the hearth or on top of the cooker for a while though, and it'll fire no bother.

Thumb pots and the like are pretty easy, but they're useful.
I'm sure there's a photo on the forum somewhere of one I made for one of those daft challenge things. I know I dried it out after thinning it a bit as it hardened, and then hearth fired it. Don't think I took photos of that bit though.
I'll find a link.

Hearth fire pots, craggan ware/ Barvas ware, is still done in the Hebrides, but only as a demo for the iron age heritage centre.

http://www.virtualhebrides.net/GM.htm

atb,
M

 

[oldtimer]

It's very "bushcrafty". I drink the soup I make with vegetables I have grown from a bowl I made myself with a spoon I carved accompanied by home-baked bread: very satisfying to know I can do this.

I used to run courses for teachers on Primitive Pottery using the simplest of materials and techniques. I'd reccomend John Dickerson's book "Pottery Making- a complete guide" for pratical ideas and Bernard Leach's "A Potters Book" to inspire.

As Toddy says, pottery is tricky, but it possible to make pots from dug clay and fired in a brush fire. It is impotant to have plenty of material in the clay that opens the texture. Sand, ground shells and ground previously fired clay can be used. It is known as "grog".

It is a fascinating subject to learn through a combination of research and practical experience. If I could give a word of advice it would be to expect a high failure rate, but persevere. It can become an obsession. Not for nothing have potters given terms for oddness to the English language; potty, glazed expression, cracked, crazed etc.

Good luck with your studies. You may get to be a sagger maker's bottom knocker at some stage.

 

[Toddy]

I would love to do a course like that

All I could find was one art school lecturer who'd done one digging out of the local clay and made a couple of pots, but had fired them in an ordinary kiln.

I went to the local pottery classes but they were mostly doing the poured slip moulds or aiming for raku type glazes. No one wanted to go and dig out the ordinary stuff and try firing it from scratch

Thank you for the information on the books though I'll have a looksee.

atb,
M

 

[British Red]

. You may get to be a sagger maker's bottom knocker at some stage.

Is that not "Saggar"?

I would love you to teach me too

 

[uncleboob]

It's very "bushcrafty". I drink the soup I make with vegetables I have grown from a bowl I made myself with a spoon I carved accompanied by home-baked bread: very satisfying to know I can do this.

I used to run courses for teachers on Primitive Pottery using the simplest of materials and techniques.

That sounds amazing! I've made my own spindle weights with clay I've refined myself and fired them in a pit fire. I had a 50/50 failure rate, which was okay as I made more than I needed. It is a brilliantly magical process


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