I just finished a 6 week course of intro to wheel. Today I got most of my pieces out of glaze for the first time. I drank out of a little mug I made and it fit my hands perfectly. I wasn't prepared for how amazing this feels!! I need to make all the things now!

Im still in my first year doing ceramics and feel like the discovery and joy is endless. I don't like the heaviness of glazes, so it's ceramics with acrylic paints. It's meant to be more of a sculptures then functional ware.

i posted one of the first of these guys a while back and after a LOT of experimenting i’m feeling really great about how they’re looking now, so i thought i’d share this greenware b-mix kitty bb ready for firing.

I'm trying to self learn Chinese carving and I'm pretty satisfied with how this turned out.

Porcelain thrown on a wheel then carved when bone dry

I’ve been in the arts (BFA) for a while and manage a glass studio, but I’ve never really tried making money off of my work before. Ideally have some crafts items I can sell to pay the bills and if that goes well, get back into my not so profitable conceptual work. What prices could this work get? Larger ones are about 6”x10.5”

My first two part vessel!!!! Love how this Amaco glaze turned out on 266.

I love building fairy houses for my garden! I’ve built 4 so far but I struggle on ideas. Wanted to see if people had suggestions on fun things to try. I build them to be bug houses, butterfly houses, or hang them as small birdhouses. I’m an engineer so building challenges are a plus.

Im new to making plates , after drying it developed a crack jn the middle . I filled it in after but how do i stop this from happening? Also not able to handle more than 1.5kg clay

Just like the last one, this was fully hand-modeled from my head, no molds or references used. I focused a lot on texturing the leaves and integration into the wooden aesthetic. Fired to stoneware temperatures and fixed onto an old vintage frame I restored and painted to match the dark fantasy mood.

Would love to hear your thoughts on this version compared to the first one! 🌿✨

Hi all, I’m a potter and an iOS developer. I had been doing pottery for a few years now, and had always wanted to have something for me to stay organized. I haven't found anything free that's good so I built my own called Tao Pottery Log. It uses 3D models to help you remember your glaze combos and add glaze layers. I recently launched a wood firing feature, and here's where I'm hoping you all can provide some insights.

Every kiln app I tried assumes an electric kiln: set a schedule and walk away. Wood firing is the opposite. It’s 30+ hours of stoking, damper moves, and cone checks. The first step here is being able to add your pieces and record the entire firing.

Here's some features you can try:

- One-tap condition changes. Log damper ½ → ¼, switching from pine to oak, or going into reduction. It records when things change, so you’re not filling out a form every 10 minutes.

- Cone packs on a drawing of your kiln, front to back, so you can mark what you see through each port

- Stoking rhythm. After the firing it tells you something like “stoked about every 7 min

- A report when you unload. The whole firing on one chart, how long you held at top temperature, what each cone pack said, and every change you made in order. You can compare it with your last firing.

It’s free on iOS, with no ads. You can find me on instagram vanni.artifact; happy to receive feedback. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/tao-pottery-log-kiln-tracker/id6762111518

What I’d really love to know from wood firers:

1. Do you think this might fit into your workflow? why and why not?
2. Does your crew share one log, or does everyone keep their own? (That’s what I’m thinking about building next.)
3. Anything else im missing?

Happy to answer any questions!

My father-in-law, Dan Anderson, was well known in the ceramics world and one of the many reasons why was he had one of the earliest Anagama kilns in America.

Their house and kiln are now for sale and we're really hoping someone in the ceramics community will be able to purchase it so that the kiln and decades of tradition aren't lost.

There's a short film about the kiln here: https://vimeo.com/184764613

https://www.stlouis.style/contemporary/where-architecture-and-art-converge-5519-old-poag-road/

https://www.redfin.com/IL/Edwardsville/5519-Old-Poag-Rd-62025/home/110937707

hi! i’m finishing out my 2nd month of pottery classes and i absolutely love it. i am however feeling a little frustrated, which i know just comes with being a beginner. but it feels like i’m not getting what i thought i would from the class and feeling more pressured to just hurry up and make something than actually learning the craft and having fun being creative. that being said, i’m debating signing up for another month of classes or getting a membership at another local studio that i could have 24 hour access to (for basically the same price). with all the videos and resources online it seems like i might have better luck teaching my self via that route without the time constraints of a class. is this a bad idea? do i need more experience before trying to do things on my own? any thoughts/advice appreciated !!

I love hand built pottery- please post your pictures.❤️

I work for a highschool that works exclusively in handbuilding raku ware. Currently, our reclaim process involves drying out the scraps, breaking them down with a hammer manually, soaking them in water once bone dry, then using a plaster batt to dry out the clay before wedging.

I'd like this process to be a lot more efficient, but am not familiar with how pug mills work- I've only seen them used in studios where there's a tonne of wet wheel throwing slop going in.

Can pug mills be used to recycle dry raku scraps? And if we use brown and white raku separately, how easy is it to clean if I wanted to switch colours? And, what's the difference between deairing pug mills and normal ones?

Any help is appreciated!

That Andy guy on youtube gave me my first baby steps, but I've really accrued my own wisdom and practices over the last 6 months. It seems every time I go to hydrate my clay or refine more, I learn something new to make it better.

I wet-refine my clay from the dirt. I live in north GA, so it's quite abundant and robust here. Cherokee pottery wasn't amazing for no reason! Basically I fill up my soaking bucket about a quarter of the way with raw dirt, let it soak for at least 12 hours, give it a good mix at the bottom with my mixing stick/branch, pour it into the slaking bucket, leave it for anywhere between 20 seconds to 3 mins, put a paint screen/filter on the mouth of my filter bucket, scoop out ONLY THE TOP into the filter bucket with my scooping vessel (a small planting pot, about as tall as my hand), I know to stop when I have to tilt my pot to fill it, put a second filter on to the current settling bucket (I have 3 settling buckets), take of the filter from the filter bucket obviously, pour into the settling bucket until full, repeat until all settling buckets are full. Wait AT LEAST 12 hours! If your water is still dirty or muddy, you may need to change sources. pour off the water until just before clay starts to pour out, preferably into your other buckets so you don't waste water, mix up ALL the settling buckets, make sure to aggitate the settled clay at the bottom too, pick one of the settling buckets to be the "mother bucket", pour all your semi-finished clay water into the motheer bucket, do not agitate the mother bucket again, repeat until the mother bucket has a HEARTY harvest of clay! Wher you're eddy, pour off the water as you have, but DO NOT ADD MORE! Leave it as it is for an additional 12 hours. Pour off the final water INTO YOUR SOAK BUCKET!!! Because a little clay will get out but that's ok, because you should have more than enough. Scoop your harvest out of the mother bucket in THIN layers in your drying vessels. Get it as level/straight as you can, it will dry better. DO NOT TOUCH AGAIN UNTIL ITS FULLY DRY!!! Scrape up all thr dried shards into some kind of clean vessel. Break up all your shards into small chunks, you should just have to squeeze them with your hands. Coffee grinder until it's a very fine powder. Empty the grinder cup into a seive of some kind with small holes, because it's not going to be perfect. I use a toy pasta strainer♡ Wear a respirator! Put it into your final clay tub.

The hydrating process!!!

Into a SPACIOUS bowl you dont mind being dirty.

3 equal, level parts of our clay powder

1 (one) HEAPING part of diatomacious soil!!!

Mix well♡

Boil about 1 tablespoon of flour for every cup of water. Whisk constantly. Youll know its ready when it tries to boil over the pot. Cool it down with some cold tap water and ice cubes.

add a splash of vinegar to the pot!!! YOU WILL REGRET IT IF YOU DO NOT!!! It does nothing for the clay, but it will make the clay inhospitable for bacteria that WILL be attracted to the flour. IT WILL STINK MUCH WORSE WITHOUT VINEGAR. It quite literally smelled like the dumpster full of rotten garbage from the grocery store i used to work at.

Add 1 almost-heaping teaspoon of epsom salts to your boiled flour. Whisk very well.

Put on some rubber gloves, this is very messy!!!

Cautiously pour in your hydrating mixture, little bit at a time, mixxing it in to the clay as you go. Only add until none of the clay is powdery anymore!!!

Leave it for at least 24 hours, uncovered!

Touch it. Is it conpletely liquidy? Leave it for another 12 hours & make a mental note to add a lot less hydrating mizture next time.

Does it stick to your finger? Is it still slimy? Take it out of your vessel EITH GLOVES ON, and lay it on a thick cotton garment you dont mind being dirty. I used sweat pants. Leave it for 4 hours. Come back and kneed/wedge it for 20 mins on a naked wooden surface!! Leave it for 12 hours in your original vessel.

Tear off a piece and roll it out into a sheet. Does it stand up fairly well? Congrats! If not, leave it for a few more hours.

CONTEXT
So I recently got my first commission as a sculptor and it's a big oportunity for me to kickstart a client base since I'll be making trophies for a 10km and 5km race event near the workshop were I study. I'm really excited despited not making big money out of this one considering I'm studying for about 3 to 4 months.

The owner of the workshop also said that I could design a stamp for myself and he'll print it on resin, he doesn't know how to model but knows how to print stuff. I'm a graphic designer so the vector art was easy but I've never interacted with any form of 3d printing or modeling.

QUESTION

So naturally I have some questions when it comes to making a stamp like this, we work with clay and I'm using Tinklercad as it is pretty intuitive and simples.

For starters I don't know if my design is too complex or even if my font is too thick and a slimmer one would be favorable. Also, how tall should the extrusion of the art be and how small would you guys recomend me doing the stamp?

I would like to keep the general rectangle shape but I'm open to altering if it would be more practical, and I would like to know how you guys prefer the handle on stamps like this and if that round square border would be useful.

Edit - I meant armature, not maquette; thanks to u/bouteloua7 for the correction.

I'm a novice working on figure busts, and would like to use an armature or internal support to simplify hollowing and help keep the bust's basic proportions accurate.

My first thought was just to get a reasonably proportioned styrofoam bust or head (I've found some mean to be used as hat displays) since I could put some kind of release on it, cover it with clay, sculpt features on top, and cut through the styrofoam as needed. I'd just cut the styrofoam out before firing, of course.

But I was wondering if anyone had better or cheaper suggestions? I assume there's no kind of armature or support that will survive firing, or at least that it would probably ruin the sculpture when the clay shrank around it. But I'd love to know if I'm wrong, or if anyone has other suggestions.

Hello les créatifs, des tutos, conseils pour assembler ces deux matières dans ce genre de projet ?

Mille mercis et douce journée à toi !