In terms of hard brick kilns in an academic setting, there are several arguments for maintaining a brick-up door design. However, the benefits and convenience of a swinging door cannot be ignored.

The East Main Hand Wheel is a DIY revival of traditional hand wheels, which have been in use around the world for hundreds of years. It is an efficient and time-tested design, and my contribution is based on my experience of remote teaching by throwing clay on the potter’s wheel.

Local materials offer endless possibilities and variety. A couple of years ago, I set out on a quest to make a palate of four stoneware glazes from one locally sourced rock. I did not want four shades of beige, but a palate of distinctly different glazes. The parameter I set was to use at least 50% of one single source rock in each of these glazes.

Caring for our planet isn't just a noble cause; it's a responsibility that touches every facet of our lives, even our beloved craft of pottery. Many artists working with clay start questioning their practice and how (and if) they can continue it in the age of the Anthropocene.
This month's FREE article.

Ceramics is difficult enough. Our work is always on the cusp of failure; it will crack, warp, dunt, or explode. We, potters, have grown accustomed to disappointment because of the regularity of failure within our process.

With over 30 years of travel throughout the world, we realized we had successfully documented the work of many potters, their pots, processes, and places where unique clay work is still being produced. Whether it is in the Amazon regions of South America or other far-off places in Central America, the Caribbean, China, Korea, Turkey, etc., along with other traditional works produced within the continental U.S. and Europe, our research and travels have allowed for the accumulation of thousands of images depicting the wonderful world of ceramics.

In any form of craft, there is an exchange that happens between the maker and the material by way of a maker’s tools. Digital craft is no exception.

"These tools have opened a new avenue for creative expression in my quest to explore the mysterious language of form. As with any making process, the tools we use influence our ideas and what we make." This month's FREE article.

My journey to uncover factors that influence crazing patterns attempts to provide a plausible explanation for a “puzzling” pattern in a Chinese Guan ware vase. Along the way, I ran across an interesting method to create new, unusual crazing patterns.

Willa Cather wrote, “Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world: but here the earth is the floor of the sky.” Over the past year-and-a-half, Betsy Williams has delved ever deeper into sourcing and testing wild clays, specifically looking for high-fire clays and glaze materials. It did not take long before she realized that prospecting for and working with wild clay was where her pottery-making destiny lay.

As makers in the modern era, we are no longer making out of the necessity of our communities. We now have the privilege to make based on what sings to our souls. And although the practicality of using wild materials in the modern age is low, for Zach Sierke there is no substitute for what these local materials can provide: connection.

Do you want to use an O’Brien? Please try it. Tell us how it is for you and if you make improvements. It’s a team sport, rah rah. It gives everyone something to do: one person to pull the brick, one person to spray, one to load the next shot, two vampires to vamp the dampers in and out.

Making a pot isn’t simply a mechanical construction, it is also the intention and energy of the person creating it.

Touch – not touch as we know it, but touch defined by adding something to soil with my effort, my touch. From this point of view, I have touched the soil of Iğdır.

I am fascinated with the laser beam as a heat source and how it "fires" the red clay surface, revealing its many true colours without the suffocation of glazes.

Open-firing, despite being regarded by some as an archaic technique, has much potential for interpretation by the contemporary potter. It is a ceramic technology that has lasted, unbroken, for thousands of years...

"I like how the glaze reminds me of our pet’s warmth and mottled look, complete with some imperfections, and how it offers some comfort during the quiet days in the studio."

It’s easy to think outside of the box when you were never in the box in the first place.

The shift from artist to entrepreneur can be a challenging one, but the beautiful thing about artists in business is that they are almost never in it alone.

Visually inspired by textiles, patterns, and illustrations, my journey toward finding my artistic voice came from a desire to create pottery that was colorful, graphic, and well-defined.

I believe that most of us are responsible for what we do, and make objects of worth that will be valued by future generations. Such objects will remind our grandchildren that the ceramists of the early twenty-first century were caring, careful, and future-thinking artists wishing to sustain the environment and lifestyle in a manner that is answerable and accountable for the future.

– Janet Mansfield, 2012

We don’t know if and how objects will matter in the distant technological future. This poses interesting dilemmas for ceramics: How do we hold on and innovate at the same time? How do we imagine a new future of tactility with clay?

The main purpose of this research was to develop a chart which would enable pot­ters firing reduction to accomplish three ends:
1) To reproduce desired results from one firing to another.
2) To convert from one fuel to another, in the event of fuel shortages, and still achieve the same firing results.
3) To conserve fuel by firing efficiently, without adversely affecting the end result.