01/12/2025
When I first started doing pottery, long before I knew how glazes worked, bought this book called Techniques with Slip based purely on the front cover. I just love the look of those bowls by
Turned out they were the only thing in the book I actually liked the look of and even though Yo Thom had provided her recipes for the book, I was a noob and didn’t understand them at all.
However! I decided to have another look last night and not only are the recipes now clear as day, I already have all the materials for them in my studio.
So this is the slip coating - made from cobalt oxide, manganese dioxide, nickel oxide, red iron oxide and kaolin. It’s applied while leather-hard and then, after carving, it will be bisqued. Next step after that is applying a tin white glaze over the top.
The glaze recipe is high fire, so I made a plate and test tole from JB1, and the other, darker, plate is the I just made on the weekend. No idea what its firing temp is yet so it may need a different glaze recipe.
For the carving I used Kemper tool with a tiny loop and a Diamond Core football shaped diamond tip. The wild clay was a bit soft so the loop was better for it. While the diamond tip was fine for the commercial clay which was more leather-hard. Was easier to get straight lines with it too. It made more boogers, but they were easy to wipe away.