But really May 20, 2020
This is my first time writing a pottery blog or diary. I will be posting an entry at least once a week, that’s the plan anyway. I will be writing about what I hope to do in the pottery that week and how I get on with it, explaining the making techniques I use, teaching you how to make some projects for you to do at home, sharing photos, giving more detail to some of my Instagram posts and more.
This week I am developing and improving my website: creating this diary, adding more photos to the gallery page and moving information around and making it possible for you to sign up for my occasional newsletter. I bought a SD reader for my phone and am practicing my photography skills. It’s not easy taking photos of shiny objects like glazed pots. I have more appreciation for photographers now. If only you could take a photo of a pot on a cloudless day without the reflection of the sky. A happy problem to have.
Here’s one of the photographs I took this week: a composite pot with a reflection of the pottery and blue sky. I made this pot at the end of my Adopt a Potter apprenticeship with Julie Ayton. Made in two sections and then joined together, this is one of the ways to make larger pots. The clay is a high iron bodied clay which is lovely to throw with. It was glazed with a tenmoku glaze (a high iron content, about 10-12%), poured inside, over the outside and then fired in a reduction atmosphere to 1280°C. I tried to wipe through the glaze with my fingers while it was still wet on the pot, a technique usually done with slip on a leather hard pot. It didn’t quite work as the pot had been bisque fired (the first firing to 1000°C) but where the glaze is thinner, it has lovely pink and brown lines.