Oxford Clay

Have you ever wondered how a pottery glaze is made from plant ashes?! Join me for this episode of the podcast where I talk to you about how pottery glazes are made from plant ashes - from start to finish!

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube

✨Support the Podcast

-------------------------------

Resources for Potters:

⭐ Pottery Paperback Books available from Amazon

Free Pottery Guides:

🆓 Download the Free How to Make a Pottery Glaze Workbook (suitable for beginne...

Ash glazes in pottery have been used for thousands of years and can create beautiful effects. Join me for this episode of the podcast, where I talk about some places to find Ash for Ash glazing in pottery.

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube

✨Support the Podcast

-------------------------------

Resources for Potters:

⭐ Pottery Paperback Books available from Amazon

Free Pottery Guides:

🆓 Download the Free How to Make a Pottery Glaze Workbook (suitable for beginners):

🆓 Do...

Firing an electric pottery kiln is one of the most energy-intensive parts of making ceramics. But there are ways to make Kiln firings more efficient.

Join me for this episode of the podcast, where I tell you about some things I think about when firing a pottery kiln to maximise its efficiency.

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube

✨Support the Podcast

-------------------------------

Resources for Potters:

⭐ Pottery Paperback Books available from Amazon

Free Pottery Guides:

It can be difficult to find large brushes for pottery glazing that are vegan. Synthetic makeup brushes provide a fantastic alternative!

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube

✨Support the Podcast

-------------------------------

Resources for Potters:

⭐ Pottery Paperback Books available from Amazon

Free Pottery Guides:

🆓 Download the Free How to Make a Pottery Glaze Workbook (suitable for beginners):

🆓 Download the Free How to programme an Electric Kiln for bisque and stoneware glaze firings (includes full kiln...

Join me for this episode where I talk to you about some great ways of cutting clay!

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube

✨Support the Podcast

-------------------------------

Resources for Potters:

⭐ Pottery Paperback Books available from Amazon

Free Pottery Guides:

🆓 Download the Free How to Make a Pottery Glaze Workbook (suitable for beginners):

🆓 Download the Free How to programme an Electric Kiln for bisque and stoneware glaze firings (includes full kiln firing schedule)

Learning how to make pottery on the potters wheel can be quite a frustrating process! I’m still learning all the time, and these mindset shifts have really helped me:

⭐ There's no ‘right’ way - your way is the right way! Trust your body to make pottery the way that feels good to you.

⭐Making pottery is a creative process. You don't have to make pottery ‘perfectly’. There are opportunities to continue to craft your pot at the turning/trimming stage.

⭐The learning journey of making pottery on the potter’s...

In this mini-episode, we’ll be talking about a great way to hold small slip casting moulds together…with a jersey hairband!

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube

✨Support the Podcast

-------------------------------

Resources for Potters:

⭐ Pottery Paperback Books available from Amazon

Free Pottery Guides:

🆓 Download the Free How to Make a Pottery Glaze Workbook (suitable for beginners):

🆓 Download the Free How to programme an Electric Kiln for bisque and stoneware glaze firings (includes full...

Join me for the final episode in the making a raw-glazed mug on the potter’s wheel series!

In this episode we’ll be talking about how to fire an electric pottery kiln.

We’ll discuss the stoneware glaze kiln firing schedule, including ramp speed and soak time at the maximum temperature of 1260 °C.

I talk about the duration of a stoneware glaze firing and describe the various stages of the kiln firing process.

At the end of the episode, we’ll make a well-earned cup of tea in ou...

We’ve glazed our mug and now it's ready to fire! In this episode, I show you how to load or ‘pack’ an electric pottery kiln, including our mug, of course. 

I’ll talk you through the kinds of things I think about when loading a kiln for a glaze firing. Such as checking the base of each pot for glaze residue, where to place each item and how to use kiln props and kiln shelves.

All these episodes can be viewed as videos in the ‘How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on the...

Following on from last week's episode of the podcast, where we made a stoneware glaze suitable for raw glazing, join me for this episode, where I apply the glaze to the mug!

Raw glazing is similar to glazing bisqueware pottery, but greater care needs to be taken not to over-wet the greenware, or it will disintegrate your beautiful pot!

I talk you through how I glaze my bone-dry mug - (mostly carefully and slowly!)

All these episodes can be viewed as videos in the ‘How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on th...

Join me for an exciting episode on the podcast this week, where I talk you through making a stoneware pottery glaze from start to finish!

If you’ve ever wondered how to make a pottery glaze suitable for raw glazing, this episode is for you! The glaze in this episode can be applied directly to greenware pottery and fired straight up to stoneware temperatures - a pottery technique known as ‘raw glazing’. This glaze can also be used as a regular stoneware pottery glaze and applied to bisqueware pottery before firing to stoneware glaze temperatures (1260oc). 

<...

In this episode, I tell you about an easy way to create a perfectly flat base (or rim!) for your pottery using just a tea towel, a flat surface and some water.

We also talk about maker’s marks in pottery and the importance of these in claiming your beautiful pottery and your creativity!

All these episodes can be viewed as videos in the ‘How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on the Potter’s Wheel’ YouTube playlist here.

Watch the video version of this episode on YouTube

<...

Attaching a handle is a critical step in making a mug because if the handle cracks off when drying, it's very challenging (some might say impossible!) to re-attach. 

Join me for this episode, where I attach the handle we made in episode 102 to the mug. I'll talk you through just how to attach a mug handle without the dreaded cracking! 

All these episodes can be viewed as videos in the ‘How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on the Potter’s Wheel’ YouTube playlist here.

Watch the video version...

Turning (also known as trimming) the base of a pot involves turning the pot upside down on the pottery wheel and carving a foot with a turning tool (or tools!).

Turning / trimming is a great way to create a beautiful finish to the base of a pot. Join me for this episode where I turn the base of the mug and talk you through exactly how I’m doing it! 

All these episodes can be viewed as videos in the ‘How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on the Potter’s Wheel’ YouTube playlist...

If you’ve ever wondered how to ‘pull’ a handle in pottery, this episode is for you!

Welcome to the third episode of the How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on the Potter’s Wheel series, where we’ll be talking about how to ‘pull’ handles. 

I talk through the things I think about when pulling handles, and we’ll pull two handles live on this episode.  

✨ The importance of wedging (also known as kneading) the clay really well before pulling a handle. 

✨ How much clay to use for pulling a handle...

Welcome to the second episode of the How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on the Potter’s Wheel series!

In this episode, we’ll actually be making our mug on the Potter’s wheel!

I talk you through the different stages of making a pot on the potter’s wheel and the different speeds the wheel needs to go at for each stage.

We’ll also cover the importance of using water and anchoring your arms when making pottery on the potter’s wheel.

The stages of ma...

Welcome to the first episode of the How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on the Potter’s Wheel series! 

In this episode, I’ll talk you through the things I think about to prepare to make a pot on the electric potter’s wheel, such as: 

✨The size of pot to make.

✨The type of clay to use.

✨The importance of wedging (also known as kneading) the clay before making anything on the potter’s wheel.  

✨How much clay to use to make the pot.

✨Shaping the c...

To celebrate 100 episodes of the Oxford Clay Pottery Podcast, I’ve created a special series on making a raw-glazed mug, hand-thrown on the potter’s wheel!

Raw glazing is where a pot is fired in a glaze firing without being bisque-fired first.

Join me for 10 episodes in this series covering each part of the raw-glazed mug-making process:

✨ 1. How to Prepare to Make a Pot on the Potter's Wheel (Podcast episode 100).

✨ 2. How to Make a Mug on the Potter's Wheel (Podcast episode 101).

✨...

You might want to write on your pottery as part of the design, to create your maker's mark or to write a dedication to someone who will receive your pot as a gift.

However, I’ve always found writing letters and words in pottery really tricky!

In this episode, I tell you about 6 ways I’ve tried to write letters and words in pottery with varying success!

✔️Etching handwriting into clay at the leather hard stage using a pen or pencil.

✔️ Painting lettering with glaze or oxides.<...

Rutile is a form of Titanium ore with Iron deposits and is used in pottery to create brown, orange and yellow colours in pottery glazes. Rutile is also used to create beautiful speckled effects in glazes.

However,  there are some issues with the global Rutile mining industry, such as high energy consumption and the displacement of people from land, in order to mine Rutile.

If you didn’t want to use Rutile in your pottery, there are alternatives to using Rutile in glazes!  Plant ashes (particularly ash from fallen leaves), for exam...

Being inspired in pottery can happen anywhere, at any time!

In this episode, I talk about 5 surprising sources of inspiration for making pottery that I’ve experienced as a Potter: 

💡 - Archaeology books - depicting the shapes and surface decoration of ancient pottery.

💡 - Books for collectors of pottery -  (or glass!) about a specific pottery industry. 

💡 - Food packaging - which often has beautifully designed and functional shapes. 

💡 - Cookware - such as casserole dishes, saucepans and enamel pie dishes. 

💡 - C...

Making neat holes in pottery can be really tricky! 

In this episode, I talk about the importance of making holes in your pottery at the leather hard stage and tell you about my favourite way of making neat holes in pottery - with a drill bit! 

You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.

✨Support the Podcast

-------------------------------

Resources for Potters:

⭐ Pottery Paperback Books available from Amazon

Free Pottery Guides:

🆓 Download the Free...

Imperfections are a natural part of pottery, and many of these only manifest after a pot has been either bisque or glaze fired.

But you don’t need to throw a pot away just because of a minor imperfection!

In this episode, I talk about four very common imperfections in fired pottery and simple ways to fix them: 

✔️Hairline cracks appearing in pieces of pottery after the bisque firing, in pieces of pottery that have been joined together

✔️A rough surface after a pot has been glaze-fired...

I’ve got very interested recently in making pottery glazes from things that would normally be thrown away. 

In this episode, I tell you about a stoneware pottery glaze that I’ve made from grape stalks collected over six months from bunches of grapes bought at the supermarket!

You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.

✨Support the Podcast

-------------------------------

Resources for Potters:

⭐ Pottery Paperback Books available from Amazon

Free Pott...

Some potters create coloured pottery by mixing oxides and stains into the clay itself before firing. A technique that uses this is called agate, where different coloured clays are combined in layers and mixed, to create a design. 

Recently, I’ve been wondering whether this would work with the home-made pigment verdigris created from recycled copper.

In this episode, I talk about some experiments I’ve done adding verdigris to clay at a ratio of 3% and 5% dry powdered verdigris to wet clay. 

You can watch the video versio...

In this mini episode of the podcast I tell you about a beautiful greeny-brown coloured stoneware pottery glaze I’ve made with ash recycled from incense sticks.

Rather than throwing the incense ash away after burning, it can be collected and recycled into a pottery glaze coloured only by the natural trace metals in the ash! 

The stoneware pottery glaze recipe used in this episode is: 

40 parts - Sieved Incense Ash (sieved with a 100 mesh size sieve) 

40 parts - Cornish Stone 

20 parts - Quartz 

<...

In a pottery class you might have a defined project to work on, but you can still experiment lots! 

In this episode, I talk about three ways to simply and easily experiment with surface decoration in a pottery class by;

✨ - Pressing an object into the surface of the clay

✨ - Making a bespoke tool to create a specific mark in your pottery, for example, fish scales! 

✨ - Leaving areas of your pottery un-glazed to create interesting colours and surfaces. 

The workshop that insp...

It's Spring in the UK, and this is an ideal time to identify deciduous trees that will drop their leaves in the Autumn. Or perhaps you live in the southern hemisphere, where deciduous trees are doing this right now!

Did you know that any plant material can be burned into ash and made into a pottery glaze! Leaves are no exception to this, and many beautiful pottery glazes can be made with leaves that fall naturally as part of a plant’s growing cycle. As Potters, we can collect these leaves, create ash from them an...

Doing pottery brings so much joy! Join me for this episode of the podcast where I talk about some mental re-frames that can support your joy as a Potter even more!

🌈 - The importance of enjoying making pottery in the present moment 

🌈 - Seeing ‘failure’ as an opportunity for learning 

🌈 - The importance of not judging your early work and instead celebrating the evolution of your pottery skills. 

🌈 - Allowing yourself to play and experiment in your pottery and how this can inspire your creativity. <...

Flat rolled out clay has a very annoying tendency to curl up as it dries! 

In this episode I talk about the three things I do in my pottery to make ‘perfectly’ flat (although nothing in pottery is ever perfect!) drinks coasters. 

✔️ Wedging (or kneading) the clay very well before making anything.

✔️ Rolling the clay out at an even thickness using rolling guides. 

✔️ The importance of gently compressing the wet clay as it dries.

You can watch the video version of this epi...

Yes you can! In fact they are an amazing way to add beautiful decorative details to pottery.

Silicone sugar craft moulds from cake making can be used by Potters who want to create intricate surface decorations for their pots. Clay is simply pressed into the mould, left to dry a little, removed from the mould and then attached to pottery as a sprig decoration.

I use silicone moulds in my pottery to make dragonfly, butterfly and bird decorations that I then attach onto my pottery with slip.  In this episode, I s...

For the last 200 years, industrial society has used a linear economic model that takes raw materials, makes them into products, sells them to consumers who then eventually throw them away. Natural resources are ‘lost’ in this process and this model is widely regarded as unsustainable. 

Contrastingly in the circular economic model, resources are continuously reused, recycled and retained in the supply chain.

In this episode, I talk about some opportunities for Potters to use the circular economy model and reuse materials in their work, such as; 

♻️ - Copper fro...

In this episode, I talk to you about the 6 different ways in which I use my favourite pottery tool - a cotton tea towel! 

💡 - To reclaim wet clay on. 

💡 - To wedge (or knead) clay on to remove excess water from clay thats a little bit too wet. 

💡 - As a rolling cloth when rolling out clay. 

💡 - Between pieces of wet flat clay as it’s drying. 

💡 - In a technique to make a perfectly flat rim or base of a pot. 

💡...

Some thoughts created by our brains, support us when making pottery, and some definitely less so! Join me for this episode where I talk about some thoughts I've had in pottery that haven’t supported my pottery such as ‘I’ll never be good at pottery’, ‘I’ll never be as good as them’ (in an evening class setting) and ‘I don't like my finished pot’!  

I talk about some alternative thoughts you can replace these with to truly support yourself in your pottery-making and make your mind a safer and kinder space to learn. 

I created this episode for anyone who thinks they might like to write a book but hasn't yet - you can do it!

The world needs to hear your ideas and unique voice! 

In this episode, I talk about how I follow my curiosity to write books on pottery. I speak about how my ideas form, and how I experiment, research, write and format my books before publishing. 

You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.

✨Support the Podcast: https://www.oxfordclay.co.uk/supp...

Designing for the environment is a way of creating products where the minimum possible negative environmental impact on the environment is intrinsic to their design. 

In design for the environment, a product is thought of holistically, from the raw materials used to make it to its manufacturing process. 

Potters have a huge opportunity to design for the environment because we have direct control over how our pottery is made and the ingredients we make it with. 

In this episode, I explain the three different aspects I used to...

Clay can be infinitely recycled before it’s fired! This process is called ‘reclaiming’ and it involves turning clay that is either too dry or too wet, back into a usable state. 

In this episode, we talk about how to reclaim your own clay without any specialist equipment, in four very simple steps. 

*Scooping sloppy wet clay out of the reclaiming bucket onto a tea towel, inside away from wind and sun.

*Waiting a few days for the clay to dry out. 

* Wedging the clay on a...

I read a really interesting book recently on regenerative fashion and it really got me thinking about whether any of the concepts could be applied to the handmade pottery industry. In this episode, I explore author Safia Minney’s ideas in the book Regenerative Fashion: A Nature-based Approach to Fibres, Livelihoods and Leadership and think about ways we could use them as Potters. 

The ideas from Regenerative Fashion I think about are; 

*Thinking about pottery holistically, from where the materials have come from, who has mined them and where, how they have...

Wishing you all a very Happy New Year! ⭐In this episode, I tell you about my four New Year’s resolutions in pottery.  

*Talking to myself kindly about my pottery, especially when things go wrong - an inevitable part of the pottery-making process! Creating a kind, safe space in my own thoughts to make mistakes.

*Prioritise experimentation and playing in pottery.

*Creating a joy list of things I really enjoy doing in pottery (one of them is this podcast!) and only doing those things.  

*To stop...

Every person creating in clay is totally unique and therefore has a totally unique creative style in pottery! In this episode, I talk about the ways you can cultivate your own unique creative style in pottery, such as; 

*The importance of following your curiosity and joy in pottery.  

*How practising pottery techniques reduces the gap between what you want to make and what you can actually make, opening up new creative possibilities. 

*The importance of making ‘mistakes’ and things going ‘wrong’ in pottery for growing your skills. 

You can...