The Pottery Process
The Pottery Process
We begin the whole process with dreams, designs and execution plans. This can be lightening bolt like
inspirations or slow burning musings that may take years to formulate. We use whatever tools we need to
realize our pottery creations. Sarah has been working in pottery for over 30 years and has acquired many
different skills in this medium that she can draw from. She is always looking for new challenges to expand
her knowledge of this versatile and exciting material.
Once we have the technical plans of how we want to make a piece, we start with raw earth materials and
with these will make all the clay, molds and glazes.
Making Our Clay
When making slip cast ware we begin with making the clay slip that will be used for slip casting. We use a carefully formulated recipe, weighing out the ingredients, mixing them in a 55 gallon barrel with water. The whole process takes about 1 week until the clay to be ready to use.
Creating our Plaster Molds
We also produce our own plaster molds for the slip cast work. This is a multi-step process that can take weeks to complete for a new item. We start with the clay piece that we want to reproduce – that is usually created on the pottery wheel. We then create the master mold with the piece. We make a silicone mold of the master plaster mold, which will allow us to make multiples of that particular mold. To make the molds we use pottery plaster and let them dry for several weeks before we can use them in production.
Slip-Casting
We then take the clay slip and pour it into our plaster molds, leave it in the mold for about 30 minutes, pour off the excess clay which gives us the rough form.
The plaster absorbs the water from the clay slip which creates a build up of clay on the sides of the plaster mold, becoming walls of the clay form. The new clay form is trimmed and gently extracted from the mold, which is left to dry to use again.
Hand-Thrown
We also hand throw pieces on the pottery wheel. For that we use prepared cone 6 clay that is made in Denver, Colorado.
Sarah has been throwing for 30 years and brings her skill to every piece, whether in the master mold, or for each mini in your home – throwing upwards of 1000 a year.
She also throws pieces that will then get made into molds that are used for the slip cast work.
Wipe-Down
All the pieces, both thrown and slip cast, are then prepared by refining the rough edges and wiping them down smooth.
Pre-Firing Finishing
We then add decorations to the surface – handles, stamps, slip trailing, texture, carving, underglaze designs, etc . . The pieces are left to completely dry before the first firing can occur.
First Kiln Firing
The pottery is loaded into the kiln for the first bisque firing at 1900 F and cooled. The whole process takes about 24 hours. After, the bisqued pottery is hard enough to safely apply the glaze.
Glaze Crafting
We use our own glazes that we have formulated and extensively tested. Creating a glaze color palette takes many years to develop; we have been making ours over a period of 30 years. All the glazes are made in our workshop and carefully weighed out, combined with water and run multiple times through a fine meshed sieve. The glazes need to be at the correct consistency to work well on the pottery.
Glazing Our Pottery
The pottery is then either dipped into or brushed with the glazes. Various techniques can be used while applying the glaze to get beautiful and stunning results. Glazing can be one of the most challenging and gratifying part of the process.
Second Kiln Firing
The newly glazed pieces are loaded into the kiln and fired to cone 6, about 2300F. It takes about 10-12 hours to fire and another 12-14 to cool the kiln.
Pottery With Gold
Pottery with gold and overglazes are decorated. These details are added after the piece has been glazed. The work is allowed to dry for 8-24 hours then it is fired to cone 017, 1350F. The firing and cooling process takes about 10 hours.
