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Hi folks, once again, no new questions in the pool, so I will muddle through with another QotW. . . . QotW: Do you use commercial products or do you mix your own? In my small studio, I could never imagine mixing my own clay bodies, it would just take up too much space. Much easier to just order what I want in clay from Standard Ceramics in Pittsburgh. Yet I do mix glazes, and slips. I try to stay away from most commercial products that way as the cost is easier for me to make my own. I have purchase some underglazes, and mason type stains to mix colors that are hard to reach with ^6 unless you have a more elaborate set up than mine. My use of commercial product is based on convenience more than anything else along with a healthy eye on budget. So what is your mix of Commercial and home mix as the original question was: QotW: Do you use commercial products or do you mix your own? best, Pres

Hi all, I just joined your lovely community. And I was wondering if someone could advise me on making my first white slip. I've been trowing some stoneware pots and I would like to decorate the inside with white slip. I have a pack of 25kg of this deflocculated porcelain dust clay in my studio: http://www.vdiez.com/catalogo/porcelana-sa-2.html?lang=en and when I asked advice to salesman I was told I could just add water and apply it directly on the stoneware. Is this true? I know that porcelain has a different shrinking percentage that stoneware, therefore I'm a bit confused. Can anyone advise me with this? That would be amazing. Thank you

Hello all, I'm participating in my first wood firing, and I have been doing some reading about using flashing slips. Some say they are applied thinly over bisque wear, others seem to apply before the bisque. Anyone have some experience with these methods? Photos would be greatly appreciated as well! I'm also interested in trying to spray some slips. Thanks!

Hey y'all, I've been lurking for awhile but haven't done much posting yet. I was curious about flashing slips. I have a converted gas kiln (which works very well and I got a lot of really good info from another thread in this forum -- thanks!) and am still relatively new at mixing glazes. (Slowly) Developing practical understanding! I really love the look of flashing slips and would love to incorporate them into my work. Though, being that this kiln was converted from electric and is made up of soft insulating brick, I'm a little concerned that atmospheric firings will flux down the bricks, so I haven't messed with it. The kiln's brick wasn't in the best shape to begin with, but I put some love into it and would rather not be wasteful. So I'm curious if y'all have any ideas about circumventing the notion of atmospheric firings to achieve a flashing effect? Might one spray ash on the surface of the slip? Mix more soda ash into the slip? Make a solution and simply brush it on top? Are any of these methods viable? I anticipate being advised to use saggars, which I'm not crazy about as the kiln just barely breaks through a "medium class" for top-loaders -- not a whole lot of space. Hopefully can circumvent the use of them, too. Holding my breath over here for a guru's advice! Thanks! Kevin

I imagine we've all had that moment. At some point we look at our work and see, sometimes rather suddenly, that we have decided to go in a direction very different from the one we've been pursuing. The moment came for me a few firings back, when I unloaded the kiln and realized I liked a lot of the pots better than I liked the stuff I had been doing before. And then, I had to think about why I liked them better. Those new pots existed, in all honesty, because I had an order for a bunch of bowls and I had to get them out quickly. I decided to use some surface techniques that I had been experimenting with to some extent. These techniques involved the use of sprayed slips and incising through layers, and then using a simple but active glaze that reacted strongly with the slips to create somewhat random surface effects. This was a decidedly unfussy approach, and I have often become mired in fussiness in my work. Except for the first few years of my career, when I was intentionally imitating the great Asian pottery traditions, I have relied heavily upon my ability to draw. I was a painter before I was a potter. I saw that potters who could draw were a minority, so I tried to exploit that skill, in a lot of different ways. If you check my gallery of older work, the emphasis is pretty obvious. But at the same time, my favorite contemporary potters are not people who can draw, or at least that skill is not something that they make heavy use of in their work. These perceptions were strengthened a couple weeks back when I went to a Tom and Elaine Coleman workshop. Tom is not a draftsman. He was also a painter before he was a potter, but it seems obvious to me that he was likely an abstract expressionist, because his wonderful pots are decorated in an abstract and spontaneous manner, with marks made in a very free and unstudied manner. Elaine's work is very different. Not only does she draw extremely well, but she is also a brilliant pattern maker. At any rate, I realized that I was not as interested in the drawing as I was in the pattern making, and this further impelled me along my new path. So, what large changes in direction have you had, and what occasioned them?