Despite being quick to throw, trim and handle, there’s still so much work that goes into small pots like this. Beyond the actual hands-on making time, there’s clay preparation, weighing, wedging and balling up all the pieces of stoneware, this alone for 30-100 pieces can take up to an hour.

Once thrown, each one taking about a minute, the vessels are left to dry overnight, before being flipped over onto their rims and allowed to dry again, in fact, most of the time spent making pots is time spent waiting for them to dry…

Trimming is fast but careful work, and then there’s the handling, which after all the blanks have been pulled, probably takes about a minute and a half per piece when I’m really in the swing of things, but guess what happens after this? That’s right, more drying! I wrap them up tightly with plastic, this way cracks don’t form around the joins where the new appendage is attached to the cup. Once unwrapped, I give the bases a second trim if they need it, (to remove smudged clay from the handling process that sometimes flows onto the foot), then they’re all set out, uncovered, to turn bone-dry. For small pots like these this only takes a day or so.

Thereafter they’re bisque fired to 1000ºC, which takes roughly 36 hours from the moment they’re fired to when they can be unpacked, then they’re waxed, glazed, the glazed surfaces tidied up, and only then, finally, can they be packed into my ROHDE KG-340 gas kiln, where, over a nine-hour period, they’re reduction fired to 1290ºC.

Two days later, once cool, they can at long last be taken out, the bases sanded, (this is probably the fastest step), and from that point the work is photographed and eventually packed and shipped to you guys. There’s still more if you can believe it, there’s the actual mixing of the glazes and the clay reclaim that inevitably occurs after making this many pots, but much of those steps are so intermingled with other pots that really figuring out how long it takes to make each cup is superbly difficult.

#pottery #beforeandafter #ceramics #celadon #glaze #handmade

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