Top products from r/Pottery

We found 37 product mentions on r/Pottery. We ranked the 95 resulting products by number of redditors who mentioned them. Here are the top 20.

Next page

Top comments that mention products on r/Pottery:

u/Artiva · 3 pointsr/Pottery

What cone do you want to fire to? What texture do you want for your glaze surface? Are you looking for matte, satin, gloss? Do you have specific colors in mind?

Find out what cone your school generally fires to and in what atmosphere (oxidation or reduction), and formulate your glazes for that. Your school may have special firing options like Raku or salt/soda firings which you may want to look into as well. Once you know what you want it's much easier to find recipes online.

If your school has a well stocked chem room, they have someone who can point you in the right direction for glazes. Ask the firing tech/professor for guidance. John Britt's The Complete Guide to High-Fire Glazes is a good start, but books are only going to take you so far. You usually have to tweak glazes quite a bit before you get the results you want. You'll want to look into line blends and triaxial blends for testing your glazes.

At its core you need 3 components for a glaze: the glass-former, the stabilizer and the flux. You also have colorants and opacifiers. The 5 basic components for a glaze are:

The Glass-former: Silica,SiO2 (and rarely Boron)

The Stabilizer: Alumina Al2O3 (and sometimes other refractory materials like titianium dioxide, and rarely Boron, which is a special snow-flake). This prevents the glaze from flowing and generally slows the melt.

The Flux: Lithium Carbonate, Sodium Carbonate, Potassium Carbonate, Magnesium Carbonate, Calcium Carbonate, Barium Carbonate, etc. also some metals like iron and the bizarre glass-former cum stabilizer cum flux, Boron. These materials make the glaze melt. Each flux has different properties which makes it valuable. They can change the texture, viscocity, surface tension and color of the glaze with small additions. With Lithium and Copper you can achieve an almost electric blue, while you'll likely get a more sedate green with Sodium and Copper. With a significant amount of Magnesium you can cause the glaze to bead up on the surface of the pot.

The Colorant: Cobalt Carb (Generally Blue), Copper Carb (Green, Blue, Red, rarely Yellow), Iron Oxide (Brown, Green, Blue, Yellow, "Red"), Chrome Oxide (Green, Red), Nickel Carbonate (Gray, Brown, variable), Manganese Dioxide (Amber), Cerium Oxide (Amber also opacifying flux), Praseodymium Oxide (Chartreuse), Erbium Oxide (Pink), Holmium Oxide (Pink-Yellow, depending on light), Neodymium Oxide (Pink-Purple-Blue depending on light) etc. Colorants are generally added in small amounts 1-5% of total. Chrome and Cobalt are very strong and generally don't need to exceed 1%.

Opacifiers: Things that make the glaze go from translucent to opaque include, Tin Oxide (powerful 3-5%, generic white), Zirconium/Zircopax (5-10%, refridgerator white), Titanium Dioxide (5-10%, creamy, mottled white), Alumina (Creamy white similar to Titanium).

Many of these materials can be found together in the form of feldspars. Feldspars will often be the base of a glaze and are then modulated with other compounds. Many feldspars are complete glazes in and of themselves, each firing to its own cone.

There are also man made composites known as frits. These are generally formulated to melt at a lower temperature than feldspars and are often the basis of lowfire glazes. Frits are great because they can incorporate otherwise soluble materials (Sodium) in an insoluble format, preventing loss to evaporation etc.

Glazes are weird beasts, but they're also a lot of fun once you start making some progress with them. Good luck in your future experiments!

u/MarsupialBob · 3 pointsr/Pottery

>Im just amazed you could get so much from one shard!

I've looked at a lot of this stuff, most of it in smaller pieces than that. I worked cataloging ceramics finds for an excavation in 2011 that covered a range of about 1730-1840; the job is pretty much pull as much information from little fragments as you can as quickly and accurately as possible. You get to a point where you can pull the basic info out pretty quickly, and Pearlware is one of the ones I ran into a fair amount of.

>could you also provide the coat of arms you think its a part of?

It's a variation of this crest. Someone who knows their English heraldry might be able to get an exact variation, but it's also a fair chance that the potter was copying a lower crest, or missed a bit, or didn't have a good image to copy from. I actually recognize it from doing the decorating on these, which are reproductions of a 1741 sgraffito harvest jug in the Potteries Museum in Stoke-On-Trent. Original partly pictured on cover here; can't find a photo of the damn thing online and don't have permission to post mine.


>do you mind me asking what specifically makes you so sure of the dating and everything?

The short answer is experience. The long answer:

I'm fairly sure it's Pearlware because of the craquelure pattern, color and design. Creamware doesn't usually have that crazing and is slightly yellow tinted. It could be Whiteware, but is a little bit blue-grey tinted (which would indicate for Pearlware). Also Whiteware can be a bit later, at which point it would be far less likely to find a British royal crest on a pot in the US.

I'm fairly sure it's hand painted because of the uneven application of the design. It could be an exceptionally poor and badly fired transfer print (which would push the date later), but I don't think so.

The date range is pretty standard. Pearlware is usually somewhere 1780-1840. Pottery styles change, so it's pretty easy to date things based on that. I've narrowed to 1780-1820 because after about 1820 printed design is dominant rather than handpainted. To be honest I could probably call it 1780-1800 based on the design, but without being a bit more certain of that I'd rather keep to the wide range.

Some of this stuff is amazingly datable. If you have a bit of the rim, there are common types of shell-edge Pearlware that you can date within 5 or 10 years. The exact molding of the rim changes shape, and the color gets changed. If I had the books on me (and they're several thousand miles away from me at the moment, so I can't) I could get a date within 10 years for a piece of shell-edge rim a lot smaller than this.

It's partly luck - this piece happens to have a reasonably identifiable design - and partly having done this a lot and having looked through a load of archaeological literature on the subject.


Edit: It's worth noting that Pearlware, Creamware, and Whiteware are archaeological terms, not ceramics terms. Each category encompasses a certain level of variation and a number of discrete styles for the simple reason that it's pretty rare to be able to further differentiate based only on the tiny sherds that are typically recovered.

u/arcs_ · 1 pointr/Pottery

The studio I work at has a copy of this book and we LOVE it. I am basically a beginner - I have been at this just over a year now, and I find it incredibly helpful to figure out my problems before pestering my two instructors with questions. I'm a big believer in self-taught troubleshooting. This book is helpful too because sometimes even they dont know what the particular problem is, and we can learn about it together!

I think you're a great friend for willing to spend (a fair bit) of money on another friend's hobby :)

u/_douglas · 4 pointsr/Pottery
  1. Have an electrician examine the outlets to make sure the circuit can handle the amps the kiln will draw. If an outlet matches the plug, that does not mean the circuit will not start a fire if it is not rated for the amount of electricity the kiln will use.

  2. Get John Britt's mid-fire book so you can learn about glaze materials and safety:
    http://smile.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Mid-Range-Glazes-Ceramics/dp/1454707771/

  3. Ceramics Arts Daily has an email newsletter, plus a lot of great info for free and for sale. The forums are pretty active as well so you can speak to other educators and studios to ask for advice.
    http://ceramicartsdaily.org/

u/Tingletangle · 1 pointr/Pottery

Clay and Glazes For the Potter is the best resource for glaze formulation. An older edition can be picked up pretty cheaply. I think I paid $15 for my copy. http://www.amazon.ca/Clay-Glazes-Potter-Daniel-Rhodes/dp/0873418638

The ceramic spectrum is also pretty good as well http://www.amazon.ca/Ceramic-Spectrum-Simplified-Approach-Development/dp/0873418212

u/kierkegaardE · 2 pointsr/Pottery

Ceramics by Philip Rawson has been really helpful. It's a pretty well rounded book, giving you both a history to pottery, and principles by which to work by. It's also just a fun read. It's 13 bucks used on amazon, so pretty cheap too.

u/onebigfreckle · 3 pointsr/Pottery

John Britt's book is the best resource I've found for these types of questions.... and will help answer all of the next questions you are soon to have now that you're dealing with glaze chemistry. Good luck.

https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-High-Fire-Glazes-Ceramics/dp/1600592163

u/yoghurt · 3 pointsr/Pottery

Sounds like you need to make a multi-part mold or recast/sculpt the positive hand so that there are no overhangs. I suggest checking out this book if you have access to a good library, or buying it if you plan to do a lot of clay casting.

u/allthegoo · 1 pointr/Pottery

Welcome to the clay world and this sub. I highly recommend you pick up a copy of A Potters Workbook. https://www.amazon.com/Potters-Workbook-Clary-Illian/dp/0877456712 It is the best at teaching you the underlying concepts of form. I try and run through the exercises every few years and am always learning.

u/patholio · 2 pointsr/Pottery

I love many of the A & C Black Ceramics Handbook series and "A Potter's Book " by Bernard Leach is an interesting (but a little dated) read.

u/Spicy_McHagg1s · 2 pointsr/Pottery

I'm going to assume that you're firing cone 6 electric. If you are, then get yourself a copy of this book. If you're firing to cone ten, then this one.

John Britt's books are great. Everything you need to know about basic to intermediate glaze chemistry are in those two books, along with a metric shit ton of recipes... most of which he tested himself.
He has a pretty extensive YouTube channel that's worth checking out too.

Initial stocking of a pantry is a little costly, but not too awful. My wife mixes glazes with off-the-rack ingredients and stocking out the basics cost around $200. That gave her 50 pound bages of the important stuff like a couple feldspars, silica, kaolin, etc and then a few pounds of a handful of colorants and more specialized ingredients like copper and strontium. There's enough material to easily keep her in glaze for a few years without restocking. Compared to jarred glazes, mixing your own pays for itself in a hurry.

If you start mixing buckets of glaze, the first thing you need to buy is a respirator. Silicosis is bad and there's an awful lot of it to be had in a dusty glaze room. You're fine once it's in a slurry.

u/pickle_licker · 1 pointr/Pottery

I just ordered "Pinch Pottery" by Susan Halls. I saw it in the class I was taking and loved it. It is a focus on various handbuilding techniques.

Pinch Pottery: Functional, Modern Handbuilding https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1454704136/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Z-csyb3D70WP9

u/YouGoRococo · 1 pointr/Pottery

We fired in an Anagama Kiln, specifically Masakazu Kusakabe's smokeless kiln (plans can be found in this book https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Wood-Fired-Ceramics-Marc-Lancet/dp/0873497422) In this firing we did a reduction cool for 9 hours till about 1550 F. I know that we reached at least cone 12 at some point during our firing. I will need to check the firing notes for more details because I can't really remember much else sorry!
We mostly used cottonwood and pine, the cottonwood produces a lot of blue ash. I did use at least four different flashing slips. This head was located behind the bagwall of the kiln. If you want the recipes I can get them to you in a couple of days when I get back to my studio.
As for the casting slip I know it is porcelain and I can provide the recipe for that as well if you are interested! I had several other items in this firing that also came out amazingly well if you would like to see pictures of them!?

u/harriedpotter · 2 pointsr/Pottery

I'm a fan of doing and trying new things. Building a kiln is probably something you could do. I'd just warn you that the brick in your existing grill probably won't stand up to the heat of a high fire kiln. There are specific bricks formulated as fire brick and they are rated to various temps.

If you like the idea of building you own then go for it! I'd start with some research. Maybe buy your wife a kiln book for Christmas then see what she says?

https://www.amazon.com/Kiln-Book-Frederick-L-Olsen/dp/0812221869/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481064608&sr=8-1&keywords=kiln+book