Glazing for Numpties

I never imagined 3 years ago I'd be making my own glazes following a recipe. There were long words like Nepheline Syenite and Gillespie Borate, Dolomite, Frit 3124, Cobalt and Copper Oxide. And then there's the food safety issue that's a whole other can of worms. It all sounded very scary, so I stuck to my commercial glazes for a while longer until curiosity got the better of me
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For Christmas hubby bought me my first glazing recipe book by John Britt. I read it cover to cover two or three times and frightened myself witless! "I can't do this"  "I'm not clever enough" "I don't understand it" All that negative self-talk kept the book gathering clay dust on the shelf
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Then curiosity got the better of me and I thought what if I just started out making something simple like a clear glaze? There were a few to choose from but one jumped out at me called Kittens Clear. How could I not make that, with a name like Paw Print Pottery?! So I went at it
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My local pottery supplier (CTM in Doncaster)  had all the raw ingredients and equipment I needed so I set to it in my shed, just a small 1kg batch.  Armed with a decent set of digital weighing scales from Amazon, some goggles and a good quality dust mask suitable for the job I tentatively started making my first batch of glaze. It took me a while to figure out what specific gravity was and how to measure it (its a number that gives you the viscosity of the glaze) but Youtube tutorials were great for that
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Success! I couldn't quite believe it when I tried it out on some jewellery. It didn't have any pits or flaws and it made my jewellery look really beautiful. Wow did I just achieve that?
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This spurred me on to create a white glaze from that clear glaze adding what's called an opacifier. Generally something like tin oxide or zirconium silicate. Again the white worked! Success number two!
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Now, what if I added a colorant? something like cobalt oxide to make it blue or copper oxide to make it green. So I gave that a whirl and hey presto I suddenly had a basic blue and a basic green glaze. Then I tried ceramic pigments - Mason stains seem to work well for me and I ended up with a beautiful orange and even a lilac
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I was on a roll now
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Suddenly I felt more confident to try more complex glaze recipes from the book and a year on I'm now mixing and matching many of them and creating new, to me, glaze combinations
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So whilst I don't yet have the knowledge to tweak the recipes considerably, I'm beginning to grasp the basics and having real fun with it
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So my aim in this little ramble is to encourage any newbie hobby potters like me, to start simple and don't be afraid to try
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My only suggestions would be

Don't be afraid to make mistakes

Know that in the course of your experimentation you are going to have A LOT! of failures and be ok with that

Don't be afraid to ask questions -  There are some great Facebook groups out there with helpful friendly experienced Potters eg 'Exploring midrange glazes together using John Britt's book' is a wonderful bunch of people
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Honestly, if this numpty can do it, you can too!

Why is handmade pottery so expensive

I often hear people say "why is handmade pottery so expensive? I can buy a mug in ASDA for £5". But if you want something that's been made with real care and dare I say it, love, then maybe it is time to rethink why handmade anything, including pottery, is more expensive than mass produced.

Essentially, we take a lump of mud and turn it into something beautiful. Something we hope you'll find beautiful too.

 That takes a long time, with SO many different stages where things can go wrong. It can be heartbreaking when you've nurtured (and I do mean nurtured) a piece only to have it fall at the last hurdle.

All those stages include throwing on the wheel, making and attaching handles, biscuit firing (9 hours in the kiln) glazing it (some of my pieces have up to 6 layers of different brush on glazes & can take up to 2 days to complete) or dipping in 1 or several glazes, then another kiln firing for 12 hours. Good quality photos come next, then if you're advertising them online and finally carefully packing and shipping to their new homes, or selling them at craft fairs.

Oh and I nearly forgot, trips to the pottery suppliers, schlepping in heavy bags of clay (ok so hubby does that bit😉) buying commercial glazes or raw materials to make my own (its not a cheap hobby for sure) mixing big buckets of glaze, measuring specific gravity (I never considered myself a science nerd but I'm getting that way!). Testing new glazes etc

So why do I do all this? It sounds like a lot of work and it is. But I just love it. When I create something beautiful out of a lump of clay, all my Christmas come at once. It sounds kind of corny but each piece is like one of my babies (I'm not kidding!) When someone buys that piece and leaves me lovely feedback, it absolutely makes my day. Or I hand deliver it to them and see the genuine thrill in their eyes. Nothing beats that feeling. Nothing.

So next time you consider buying a piece of handmade pottery remember the time dedication, love and a little piece of ourselves that's gone into each piece, because we loved it before you did. 

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