[Home studio set up]

+1 for all comments about moppability! Easy cleanup is important. In addition, if you have a separate room as opposed to a corner of an open basement, have a pair of studio shoes that go onto your feet religiously when you enter the room, and come off when you leave it, even to go across the hall for water. This will make sure dust doesn’t get tracked through the rest of your house. 

If your basement is dark, a coat of white paint is something I’d really recommend. Also, you will never be sad about additional task lighting. 

Don’t let your reclaim get too far ahead of you. A larger reclaim bin is not the good idea it may seem like on paper. Do small batches more frequently if you can. 

[QothW: How would you help out beginners stuck working alone with their processes?]

Especially in the last 2 years, there’s been some fantastic instructional videos and online instruction options come about. It’s really increased the accessibility of learning, imo.

[Oxide washes on top of glazes! Oh my!]

I’m a bit behind on my forum reading, so I’m only getting to this now.

This example is the exact reason why I don’t offer glaze choices outside my existing glaze stable to commission clients. But at this point for you, that’s a future consideration, and you have made a promise and you need to deliver. So. Onwards. 

As much as we all hate being told we need to test things, in ceramics you can’t get away from it. You’re probably not getting this saucer out of the kiln in anything less than 3 firings, but what goes into those kiln loads in what order is what’s up for debate. My suggestion is to do the tests before taking on the piece itself, but you’ll have to decide if the ADHD squirrel will let you do that or not. If you charge ahead without testing, you’re going to wind up doing as many as 6 to try and fix the screw ups. 

You need a darker-than-the-version-you-used glaze. Have you first tested to see if a thicker application of this glaze does what you’re describing, or is it an opaque one that doesn’t change much? Is it really flat, or is there some reactivity to it?

There’s actually nothing saying you can’t add stain to an existing commercial glaze to alter the colour, although you’ll have to do some testing to figure out if a stain or an oxide will work better to modify it.  You may void any claims about it being food durable, but that isn’t a concern in this instance. You’d want to make some line blends to find the right tint you want, but this could solve the problem. As long as the specific gravity of your glaze remains constant, you can add dry ingredients to x number of grams of the wet glaze,  sieve thoroughly (2x through an 80 mesh test sieve), and get repeatable results.

I think the best way to do a wash that gets wiped off of the high points on a texture would be to either try it underneath, especially if the glaze is in any way translucent.

If it’s opaque, you’ll to bisque, apply glaze, bisque again, apply and wipe the wash, and then fire a third time like I think you have been wanting to avoid. Sorry!

There’s nothing wrong with firing a kiln partially full, even if it’s more efficient to have other things in it.  It’s not stupid if it works, and you’d be surprised at how much firing an electric kiln doesn’t cost. Here’s a link to an archived thread describing how to calculate yours.

That said, filling the blank spaces with test tiles is a most excellent plan. You will pretty much never be sad to have  glaze tests as references, whether you think they worked at the time or not. The information you gain from them will help build your skill and knowledge base, which is incredibly important for anyone working with commissions or doing bespoke work. You need to be able to guide your clients through what’s possible and what isn’t, and you can’t do that effectively if you don’t know yourself. When I was working at the glass place I spoke about in the QOTW thread, we would make random stuff just to see if it worked or not, and they then got used as showroom samples. If there was space available in the kiln, we always put something weird in, or tried to ‘break’ something to see how hard we could push a material.

 

 

 

[QotW: Do you take on custom work?]

5 hours ago, shawnhar said:

That was my dream, to just make mugs, they are my favorite.

I have more than one friend IRL who make a solid living only (or 95%) making mugs. Have a look at Blair and Sarah Dawes at Salty Sea Dog Designs, and Pixie and Shpriken (they don’t like using their given names) from Shprixieland Studios. Both couples make mugs with VERY different styles, and both will occasionally make additional items because they like doing it, or as special editions. They’ve both decided that in the wake of the pandemic, they’re taking their business models almost entirely online. Pixie and Shpriken do a few shows as working holidays/reasons to visit friends. They both spent a number of years doing the show circuit up here, and built up loyal followings/email lists, and their online overhead is MUCH lower than booth fees+travel costs+pet/house sitters. The more they really lean into what they like making, the faster they sell. 

[Long distance moving a kiln]

Having just watched a friend move across country and have her kiln wrecked: keep it crated if you can’t just have them redirect the shipment. 

[QotW: Do you take on custom work?]

I don’t usually name drop, but if anyone wants an idea of the types of projects I’m talking about, the company I was at was called Danziger Glass. It’s no longer operating under that name, as the owner has since passed, but I’ve gone through school (grade 2-BFA) with the head designer, Treena Primmer. She’s now the owner of Twist Desgins. 

There’s a few projects on both this old Houzz listing and in the Twist galleries that I helped with. I was initially hired to remake glass slump moulds for the fountain on the Houzz listing. One of the bowls had cracked and was leaking, so we needed to make replacements, and the original mould had been misplaced.

[QotW: Do you take on custom work?]

Trello is a delight! No more lost post it notes! 10/10 recommend. 

The glass place that I worked at had a different breakdown for payment than what I use, and I only want to mention it here because the mindset behind it does matter.

They broke their payments into 3: the first was for the design consult itself. The design process usually involved at least 2 hours sit down with the client, plus preparing final drawings and any small fabrication samples that might be needed to help folks visualize things. For larger projects, or ones with extended timelines (months or years), the design fee was charged when final drawings were submitted, so that the designer was compensated in a timely fashion. Smaller projects that had a shorter delivery span would have this charged along with the second payment, which was to cover materials and production labour. The third payment was taken after the final install was declared perfect by the client. Yes, sometimes this involved more than one visit. They had parameters in place for price changes if there were more than a certain number of changes were made, or the scope or size of the project altered too drastically, but if everything went smoothly the third payment is your profit. If it doesn’t go smoothly, the third payment was to cover any cost overruns for materials or labour.

The overall model was to provide a luxury product and an artisanal service. Because it’s not common to be skilled at this, they could set their value, and did. 

I think the reason most people get frustrated with the custom work model is because they’re not putting enough emphasis in their own minds on how valuable this planning and designing skill really is, so they don’t charge nearly enough for it. Then they feel at the end like they’ve worked too hard for too little. Folks have to remember that clay work IS one of those 10,000-hours-worth-of-practice-to-develop skills, and most people don’t possess it. Even if you’re not clay famous, even if you “only” do clay work part time, if you didn’t go to college for it or don’t do it for your day job,  you’ve put in the work to learn it. You’ve earned the right to charge for your skills.

The next time you get tempted to write off your skills or undercharge for them, remember what it was like learning to centre. Or make a proper slab, for the hand builders. Look at where you are now, and how long it took you to get there. 

[QotW: Do you take on custom work?]

Ha! Someone asking about this years ago was the reason I first started posting here, breaking my lurking habit.

I was working for a business that only did bespoke glass work, so I’d seen a model for how to make that successful. I knew when I started my own business to keep it within parameters I could manage from the start, and if I couldn’t, it’s better to say no. Custom work is not making a product, it’s offering your skills as a service, which is a different mindset. It’s a lot more about communication and some amateur psychology/understanding of client behaviour than it is about making the thing itself. You have to be able to keep an unknowledgeable person within the parameters you set without making them feel dumb or condescended to, and you have to make them feel like they’ve really received something special in the end.  You have to know when to say no, and you have to be really honest with yourself and with them about what you can deliver, and you have to not be afraid to reach out to communicate if something goes wrong. Ideally with solutions in hand. 

 I’d go nuts doing custom full time. As an occasional challenge though, I kind of like it. I FULLY understand anyone who doesn’t though, because it can be a lot of mental and sometimes emotional work. “It’s not something I have space for” can cover a lot of reasons without getting into unnecessary details. I agree with Mea that too much info given will just get you grouched at.

I have some things that are an automatic no. I will not make someone else’s work in whole or in part, I don’t do custom glaze colours, and I will not make any egg separators/yarn bowls/other gadgets that involve something coming out of a nose. Ew. I don’t take custom during Christmas unless ordered before the start of October, and I don’t do custom over the border. I don’t take custom if I’m overwhelmed in any way, or my mental health doesn’t allow me to. It’s a disservice to everyone involved.

If none of that is in play, we can talk. Usually people want some variation on something I already make: just that bowl with a different glaze in my lineup, or something along those lines. Most people come to me because they already like my style, and want a variation on the existing theme. But if they want something more, this is what I go with. 

Pricing:

I do make it clear from the start that the following is a design fee, but I don’t break down for them how I arrive at it. That part’s none of their business.

If changes or designs are more than just the same thing with a different glaze, I use the price on the original piece or something similar as a base. If the piece is a different size, I’ll  add a bit extra to another item I make that’s the same size. If there’s design or form changes, I add $10-20 per extra step/other add-on. I do pad this without shame or embarrassment. I recently had to double the price of a small  item because of the number of changes made, for instance. But if the changes are simple and don’t put me out work wise that much, I might only add a little. They are paying me a nuisance fee for breaking my schedule/work cycle that’s commensurate with how far out of my way I have to go. I possess a skill that most don’t, and I have other existing customers that need attention too. 

If the items need to be shipped, the client is told they’ll be responsible for that as well, and that it’s in addition to the cost of the item, and will be calculated when the item is ready to go. If they can pick up, they don’t have to worry about that part.

I take a 50% (including tax) non-refundable deposit to begin work, and the other half, plus any shipping, is due when the final piece is picked up, or approved via photo before shipping. 

Timeline:

I let them know the timeline I’d expect to have the piece done within, which is twice the amount of time it’ll take to get it right on the first shot. If I get it done early, everyone’s happy. If it screws up the first time, I can remake it with no stress.  As an extra level of hedging my ceramic bets, I make duplicates of the item. It never fails that if you only make one, it screws up, but f you make two, they both turn out. As a bonus, presenting the client with a choice of the 2 finished items gives a sense of abundance and extra care taken on them. Sometimes they purchase both, sometimes not. I don’t upsell it. If the original client doesn’t buy the duplicate, someone else does. This also helps with profitability.

 

During the initial consult, I make no effort whatsoever to minimize any costs or time constraints or potential nuisances to the customer, but I don’t make anything sound overly difficult either. I don’t make any assumptions about their budget or time, I only lay out pricing and what they can expect from the process. I try to give them an accurate idea of how it’s going to go, and let them make their choice from there. If they agree to the terms I set, I send a confirmation email with everything that was discussed, and I don’t begin work until they reply in the affirmative and pay the deposit. That way we both have something to refer to in the event of a disagreement. I also let people know things like shipping policies and anything else that might be relevant. If someone wants gift wrapping, or a card/note included with a gift, I throw that in upon request as an extra value thing. 

I have yet to have a custom client that was anything less than excited with their purchase. I like being able to do that for people, and I think taking your time with the initial setup is key to making that happen. 

 

 

[Buildings insurance for home studio]

Okay! I heard back from my expat friend. She said that the best route might be to find an insurance broker. They’ll have access to policies from several different insurance companies, and they usually can find you the best rates and accommodate unusual situations.

[QothW: How would you help out beginners stuck working alone with their processes?]

Pres, who normally does the Q of the week, is taking some well deserved time off, and we’re filling in for him for a few weeks. There’s a couple of suggestions in the list that we’ll be using, but I wanted to start off with this question.

Personally, I’m always interested in what other people make, and how. I don’t think pottery videos will ever get old. What I’ve noticed over the last 2 years especially, is that there’s a lot of folks that took up doing pottery at home, learning online, and posting it on social media.  

In perusing the socials, especially the video based ones,  I come across a lot of beginners who are doing a lot of  things awkwardly or inefficiently, as you’d expect for folks getting started. But if you’re working alone in your workshop, you don’t have access to others at a similar stage of learning to trade ideas with, or help problem solve.  Without making light of anyone, and acknowledging that sometimes people do “inefficient” things because they feel otherwise satisfying,  what things would you suggest to any beginners to make their lives easier? Are your suggestions based on the assumption the advisee is working towards a more professional level of work, keeping it as an enjoyable and small scale activity, or will it work for everyone?

I’ll start with a maybe slightly controversial one for the non-professionals  who are considering buying bat systems: You don’t need bats for mugs, unless they’re wider than they are tall. Learning to lift small items cleanly onto a ware board cut to fit your shelves saves more space. You won’t regret it.

Along similar lines, I’d also like to suggest that if you don’t like cleaning bats, take your sponge to it before you remove it from the wheel and the slip is still wet. It’ll help lower dust in your studio a lot, and then all you have to do is scrape the remaining clay off with a  6” drywall knife/scraper when you take the piece off the bat.

[Buildings insurance for home studio]

I’m going to tag @Chilly and @PeterHin on this one. Being in Canada and the US, many of us don’t know  how the insurance system works in England, but I’m hoping those two regular contributors might have better insight. I’ve also got an ask in to an expat friend on Facebook, and I’ll report back if I get anything helpful from her.

[Uneducated but enthusiastic ceramicist looking for advice about stoneware glazes]

6 hours ago, Bauhaus said:

It’s less expensive than doing more college courses

Maybe, maybe not. Not all classes are made the same.

 The way you make pottery for a living is different than making a few things where your heart takes you. A lot of people are drawn to work with clay, because it’s tactile and fun, but not everyone wants or needs to be a professional production potter or a sculptor. Classes designed with hobbyists/other skilled non-professionals in mind have to omit a lot of information, because you’d loose too many students to frustration otherwise. If you know you want to make a living at it, taking a more process/skill building oriented class that might have less physical product to show at the end could save a lot of time and effort. 

[Ceramic Cheese Molds]

I figured antique ones would be the most likely references, because they would have been in more common usage, and as such people would have worked out the design kinks already. Didn’t see a reason to fix what wasn’t broken. 

[Uneducated but enthusiastic ceramicist looking for advice about stoneware glazes]

Typically we see 1000 C as the usual bisque temperature from the UK and other places on the right side of the Atlantic. I could see using the 1040 temperature if you were working with a red clay, or a white earthenware that contains more than the usual amount of sulphur or other organics to burn off that might cause glaze flaws later. But that’s not probably going to be your first concern.

 In terms of painting pieces, it’s a really good idea for anyone who’s new to ceramics to make a few test pieces to see how their new chosen materials react together. Mixing brands of underglazes and glazes can be, and is done all the time. Unfortunately, the manufacturers don’t usually provide information on how their glazes mix with other brands, so you have to play around with it a bit yourself to get a feel for what will happen. 

Looking at the Scarva ES40 listing, I notice they recommend a top temperature of cone 9/1280 C, and suggest it for use as a tile/sculpture body. If you plan on making functional ware, that description would indicate to me that the finished ceramic at cone 9 might still be more porous than you’d want for food use items or vases that need to hold water. You would have to test the porosity of a fired piece to confirm, but that would be a project that you can put off for this first bag of clay. The reviews do say it’s quite nice for hand building, so for some first projects and to figure out how clay moves and behaves I’d use up what you have with maybe more decorative things/flower pots in mind.  You can check with Scarva for suggestions on a good clay for functional pots the next time you go shopping.

Especially when you’re first learning how to work with clay, there is a LOT of things that you’ll have to learn the feel for. The learning curve can be kind of steep and frustrating, but if you come at it with a sense of exploration, curiosity and play, it can be more rewarding. Try not to go into any of your first projects with your heart dead set on a specific outcome, but instead approach with a “I wonder what will happen if..” mindset.   

 

[Ceramic Cheese Molds]

I actually did get asked to modify a berry bowl design a few years ago for someone who was making soft cheese. She wrote me back and told me they worked out just fine, but I haven’t had a lot of call for them afterwards. I can’t remember now if she was using a press or weights.

After she’d commissioned me, I happened to stumble across some antique ones in an architectural salvage shop, so they made a really good reference. It was really helpful to be able to hold them and get an idea of thickness and other things. The forms themselves were very homey/homely, and sturdy, but not unusually heavy. Very homestead/farm/Medalta crockery feel, very like the ones that come up in google for ceramic cheese mould search terms. The ones I held were cylindrical, with four vertical rows of holes on the sides, with the pattern extended through the bottom of the pot to the centre. There was some variation in hole patterns, but they were more sparse than what I’d do for a berry bowl.  The rims were rounded/beefed up a bit to resist chipping. There was a slight foot rim to allow whey drainage, but it was very minimal, like what you see on the bottom of a commercial coffee mug. 

When I went looking for blogs on cheese making, the presses they were selling seemed to have the same kind of moulds as for soft cheese processes, so I don’t get the sense the considerations are a lot different for making hard vs soft cheese.
 

[Can a high-fire cone 10 porcelain clay be fired to only cone 6 or cone 7 successfully?]

Just a little extra info on stains that could be useful in the future.

First, it tells you on the Mason website if certain stains need specific chemistry to develop or not develop. They have a handy chart on that.

Also, Digitalfire has some good reading on what materials are, and why that’s important. Here’s a link to the article on encapsulated stains, but if you want some expanded reading, follow the blue links to more articles within the same website.

[Can a high-fire cone 10 porcelain clay be fired to only cone 6 or cone 7 successfully?]

+1 to everything Min said about the stains and chemistry.

If you want to see if you can work an inclusion stain into your not-so-red clay, there’s different techniques you can use to disperse the pigment that are less labour intensive than straight spiral wedging. The least physical version is to roll out the clay and dry it completely so you can slake it down and slurry mix it. This method has the benefit of being able to weigh your materials dry, so you can record an exact percentage of stain. It will be slow, however, due to the drying. 

If time is an issue, you can mix your stain with a little water to create a paste, and take your block of clay and cut it into slices. Layer the stain with the clay slices, and use the cut and slam method to wedge them. This will disperse the pigment evenly and quickly. A bit more sweat equity into this method than slurry mixing, but much less than spiralling it in. 

As far as durability at cone 6 for beads, it could be worth testing a few to see. The porosity is more of a concern for functional work, because you don’t want a vase or coffee cup to weep, and you generally want your clay and glaze to mature at the same point to avoid a lot of possible flaws. But if you’re not glazing and porosity isn’t a concern, clay that is fully mature at cone 10 could reasonably expected to be pretty sturdy at cone 6 or 7. 

[Older Kiln Struggling to reach Cone 6]

51 minutes ago, cusher said:

I’m surprised at the price they are not cheap

That kiln is likely 20-30 years old, if it lacks any electronic components. I don’t know how many firings you put on it, or the person who owned it before you did, but I’ve got over 200 firings on my elements and they’re still going strong. Kiln bricks, unless they get scratched up or physically damaged. For the price of a new set of elements and maybe a switch, you get essentially a brand new kiln. Granted, an analog model, but they do last. It’s good value for the money.

[Older Kiln Struggling to reach Cone 6]

You don’t specify your chamber size, and that can make a difference. If your 3 cu ft kiln isn’t reaching cone 6 in 12 hours, that would indicate more element wear than it would in a larger, tightly packed kiln. My manual 7 cu ft kiln takes a good 10 hours to hit top glaze temps, and that’s not unreasonable.

edited to add:

you can also get your kiln specs from the manufacturer, and find out from there what the resistance level is supposed to be on new elements. If you have a meter, you can check how far off the elements are from the original and see what the wear is.

[Jizhou leaf tea bowl]

2 hours ago, PeterH said:

Which I suspect would be less likely to be "chromatically  influenced"

Not at all! Cone 10 reduction celadons are like the Little Prince’s Rose, or the Princess and the Pea: sensitive creatures that notice minute changes. Switch one feldspar out for another, or use ball clay instead of kaolin, and you’ll wind up with a noticeably different shade, even if it stays within the blue/green colour family. Thickness differences are very noticeable, and if applied wrong, they’ll show every drip mark or scratch. On the plus side, they highlight carved textures quite beautifully.  Even a simple recipe like Leach 4321 base will vary if you switch a material, or if it gets hit with ash in a wood kiln. Put that same base over a white stoneware vs a grolleg porcelain and the stoneware will be a Koryo dynasty green, but the porcelain will give you something far more robin’s egg blue.

I haven’t gone as in-depth into tenmoku glazes so I can’t enumerate the exact differences between them, but celadons can be very colour responsive. They’re  just subtle changes within a specific chromatic range. 

 

[Jizhou leaf tea bowl]

I don’t think the artist who made the pot in your supplied image is applying overglaze: I think they’re just putting a leaf on a glaze that’s got the right chemistry to be inclined to turn that gold colour when the ash from the leaf melts into the right spot. Some of the colour response is going to come from the change in the fluxes in that really localized area, and some of it would come from the additional iron, chrome and manganese. And phosphorous. 

Joe at Old Forge Creations did this blog post last September about some chemistry explorations he did with a black tenmoku recipe that formed yellow crystals. He was fine tuning the rate of iron crystals by altering the amount of magnesium and calcium. There’s more, but that’s the Cole’s notes version if you don’t want to read the blog. If you look at the image in Peter’s reply just above mine here, you can see that there are tiny yellow specks in the glaze, meaning that one is probably already susceptible to turning that particular gold colour. Adjusting the localized chemistry with ash from a botanical that contains magnesium is enough to push the glaze in the right direction. Could happen in either oxidation or reduction I would think. 

[Adding Fee for Credit Cards?]

I also think that your customers don’t need the gory details of your pricing formula. Its not that I think we need to lie about things or not be transparent when necessary. It’s that presenting any additional charges, whether it’s adding shipping to checkout or sales tax or credit card fees, is drawing unnecessary attention to something no one really likes. It generates a feeling of misrepresentation when you keep adding things to the price tag, and that can be really frustrating (or worse) for some. I don’t want my customers frustrated, I want them happy so they come back. I don’t want to generate more opportunities for myself to have to smooth ruffled feathers.

[bed of silica]

If you were to put the sand in a tray, it would run the risk of cracking like any waster or cookie I would think. Not bad for the clay piece, but might not save on a lot of the cleaning. But if the piece is of a size where it’s practical, just using a whole shelf instead of a half shelf would do the same thing. You’d have to have a wide enough container to tip the sand into, but that’s pretty doable.

[Adding Fee for Credit Cards?]

I think there’s nothing wrong with increasing your prices to reflect increased business costs, which credit card fees definitely are. But from a customer service standpoint, and even a general professionalism one, I think it’s better to just roll it in.

1) I don’t want to put myself or an employee in a position that sets up angry “what the heck is this extra fee? Are you trying to scam me?!” conversations. There is a segment of the population that just wants to fight with retail workers, and I have no patience for being on the receiving end of it anymore. It’s best to prevent as many scenarios like this as possible. 

2) An itemized list of all of my expenses is really none of my customer’s business. They don’t need the gory details.

[Clay Recycling Advice Sought]

I don’t have the physical space to have a pug mill, so I make sure my slurry is really smooth before laying it out. Cuts down a lot on the wedging afterwards.