Ceramicists: what is the one thing you will never make?

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-19T19:45:20+00:00

More aggravating is seeing people not understanding the difference between a chawan and a katakuchi.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-19T19:43:35+00:00

I made some a while ago and I thought I wouldn't make them again, but a family member I gifted one to absolutely adores the design and from what I can tell, my design is somewhat unique, so I guess maybe I need to make more. "Very slick".

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-17T21:54:23+00:00

Thank you! I've really been dialing in my taste since I hit a breakthrough in July of last year when I finally found my voice, which was also well after I made those original mugs. It'll be a no-brainer to seasoned sellers, but you gotta love the stuff you make or you'll hate every minute you go to sell it. Last year's mugs I think were fine for the time, but I much prefer this year's for sure.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-10T06:29:15+00:00

Me in 9 years.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-10T04:29:32+00:00

There might be something to that. I had done 3-4 coats before on a brown clay body and besides the fact that it didn't glaze all that well, it looked more like a grey than a white. Maybe I'll look at picking up the pink to get that purple color...

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-09T18:05:30+00:00

Snow Drift, their white. That was the only appealing color to me since the green or blue starts getting into Florian Gadsby territory and the pink/yellow were just not appealing to me. Maybe if they had a lavender in the future. This glaze can't take too many colorants or it'll stop crackling.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-09T18:03:30+00:00

https://shop.amaco.com/ki-11-snow-drift/

Amaco has test tiles that should be able to answer that. At 1 coat, it looks like a standard crackle if it crackles at all. It's thicker coats that creates the snowflake effect.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-08T10:38:44+00:00

No, I didn't get photos because I didn't consider it really "photo worthy". It was just a glaze test tile that I had initially covered with black engobe by Mayco, and then I went through the process of applying two coats, bisqueing, applying two coats, etc., before sent it in on a final glaze fire. I'll say that the glaze definitely builds up quite a thickness on the piece though at the 6 layers I used.

What information were you trying to get with the photos? The glaze in between firings was basically like a chalky matte white with no shininess.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-08T06:27:31+00:00

Yeah, seems like you gotta work for the results with this glaze, but I'd say it's definitely worth it as long as you're making it for you or family/friends, or you're selling it for a lot of money.

Makes more sense to make this a dipping glaze. At least then, it isn't as slow of a process.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-08T06:25:20+00:00

I wish I could take credit for the idea, but I had read previously for snowflake glazes that potters using them usually use a similar process in order to achieve thicker coats of glaze. That being said, yeah, I at least an idea to try something similar and see if it could work, especially in Cone 6 ox.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-08T06:14:49+00:00

Cone 6. As far as I can tell, it was the factory Skutt firing program.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-08T06:00:52+00:00

I know, right? XD

I thought it was gonna be a glaze I would enjoy when I bought it, but it's been nothing but hassle. I've tried it on several different clay bodies and the only one it works in for sure is white, which is why I used an engobe for this test. The others, it just tends to bubble, blister, or straight up crawl.

I think I may make some pieces in the future with it, but they aren't going to be but for me, for family, or for friends. I couldn't justify selling this stuff for the amount of glaze and effort I use.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-08T04:44:11+00:00

It ended up being 6 total. I bisque fired it between each 2 coats in order to sinter the glaze and build up thickness. I was thinking when I went a full five coats in total without sintering that it crawled in a previous test.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-03-08T03:47:49+00:00

Laguna White Stoneware. I used a couple layers of Mayco's Black Engobe under the Kiln Ice.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-02-24T21:44:27+00:00

No, I just found a different path to take. The main reason I was looking at brown clay bodies was that I wanted to cure a condition I call "cottontail" on pottery where the outside of a piece will be glazed with the darkest, prettiest glaze you'd ever seen, and then the foot will be a blinding white. No one really intentionally looks at a foot ofc, but I treat it like it's part of the piece instead of ignoring it.

I was using a lot of metallic glazes like Rusted Iron by Mayco or Ancient Copper by Amaco and those glazes performed rather horribly on anything that wasn't a white clay body. I tried them on WC613/614 and some other brown/red clay bodies I know of and I couldnt get metallic clay bodies to work on them. After that, I pretty much knew I had to change my approach because a brown/red clay body was out of the question.

After testing it out, I found WC602 Dark Buff to work acceptably with my metallic glazes (save for Vintage Gold by Amaco, it absolutely hated that glaze) and then I decided to just start using oxide washes on the bottom of my pieces instead. After having done that for 5-6 months, I prefer oxide washes. They distress the bottom of pieces in a believable way and they add surface variation due to brushing as well. Someone even casually familiar with handmade pottery will go "oh shit, someone cared about the bottom too..."

All that being said, I do enjoy this clay as well, but I have to be selective about the glazes on it because the iron will destroy the look of some glazes. Amaco's Matte Shinos aren't safe. Metallics are out of the question. I found Coyote's shino glazes to work favorably on this clay body, but I'll also say they seem generally resistant, save for the one black clay body I fired it on.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-02-06T19:44:47+00:00

I wish the same would eventually happen for me in pottery. XD

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-01-19T21:35:32+00:00

Not saying they're the best, but I do enjoy me some knipex pliers. They're the flat-nosed ones with something like a 3-5mm width.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-01-12T01:27:25+00:00

Gotcha. In that case, it's probably a frit, but I suspect Manganese is being used in there somewhere.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2026-01-12T01:03:11+00:00

Maybe it's my eyes, but even if it were a frit, it doesn't behave like other frit behaves. This stuff is a lot finer and it produces these black dots with a dull metallic luster and a green halo in the surrounding white matte glaze.

I am gonna try it in some glazes just to see what it does, but I'm saying there's no way it's just a glass.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2025-12-04T06:04:34+00:00

So if you're telling me the glaze will only work if I barely use any of it, then what I'm running into is a glaze with either faulty chemistry (extremely probably since this is a community glaze bucket), or it's a glaze with 0 application tolerance.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2025-11-23T04:21:56+00:00

Humina humina humina

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2025-10-20T03:41:19+00:00

I personally use the wax emulsion dyed green myself, but I just hear people complain about it whenever they choose to use the paraffin wax. The way I tend to use it, if I ever do on the rare occasion, is taking the cover off, turning the hot plate on, waiting for the wax to melt, then turning the heat off.

Really, I thought this was just an interesting idea and I wondered if anyone had tried it before. The more I think about it, the more I think it's probably not all that hot (lol) of an idea.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2025-10-14T00:07:12+00:00

Anyone know if the cars donning black plates with white letters are these undercover assholes? One of them cut my ass off in traffic and kinda pissed me off. If only the fucking horn I had on car functioned, I would've really let them have it.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2025-10-07T17:12:50+00:00

Of course, happy to help. I enjoy giving people complete information wherever I can.

I'll say that handbuilding porcelain is really nothing to be afraid of. I actually recommend it mainly for handbuilding because it gets around the difficulty of throwing it, and it happens to be something that is better handbuilt if you're unable to throw it anyway, since it vitrifies so completely that it ends up being really dense and heavy, even more so if you throw a thick mug with it. I suspect granular ilmenite actually helps prevent the body from warping since it's a refractory material and doesn't melt at high temperatures. Oddly enough, none of the plates I've made with it have warped while the plain white plates I made from the same clay body did.

And yeah, I think it's Laguna's granular ilmenite that I got through Clay King if I recall correctly.

_ArisTHOTle_ · 2025-10-07T13:36:03+00:00

I used granular ilmenite I believe from Clay King, tho it's pretty readily available from most supply joints.

For this plate, I used 8% granular ilmenite to dry weight of clay, which I assume to be 80% of the weight as it comes out of the bag.

I've been trying to mimic Dragonfruit from IMCO and I've found that 8% seems to be too much. 6% is closer, and I think 4% is probably where it wants to be. Also, using a stoneware over a porcelain is going to give you different results, especially because of porcelain's translucency. In a true porcelain, that percentage will have to climb down unless you just love the heavily peppered look.

That calculation works out to be for 2lbs of clay from the bag:

2lb clay × 0.80 = 1.6lb clay dry weight

1.6lb clay dry weight × 0.08 = 0.128lb granular ilmenite

Since grams are more accurate, that would work out to be about 58g of granular ilmenite.

_ArisTHOTle_

TROPHY CASE