Oxford Clay

Welcome to the first episode of the How to Make a Raw-Glazed Mug on the Potter’s Wheel series! In this episode, I’ll talk you through the things I think about to prepare to make a pot on the electric potter’s wheel, such as: ✨The size of pot to make.✨The type of clay to use.✨The importance of wedging (also known as kneading) the clay before making anything on the potter’s wheel. ✨How much clay to...

To celebrate 100 episodes of the Oxford Clay Pottery Podcast, I’ve created a special series on making a raw-glazed mug, hand-thrown on the potter’s wheel!Raw glazing is where a pot is fired in a glaze firing without being bisque-fired first.Join me for 10 episodes in this series covering each part of the raw-glazed mug-making process:✨ 1. How to Prepare to Make a Pot on the Potter's Wheel...

You might want to write on your pottery as part of the design, to create your maker's mark or to write a dedication to someone who will receive your pot as a gift.However, I’ve always found writing letters and words in pottery really tricky! In this episode, I tell you about 6 ways I’ve tried to write letters and words in pottery with varying success!✔️Etching handwriting into clay at the leather...

Rutile is a form of Titanium ore with Iron deposits and is used in pottery to create brown, orange and yellow colours in pottery glazes. Rutile is also used to create beautiful speckled effects in glazes.However, there are some issues with the global Rutile mining industry, such as high energy consumption and the displacement of people from land, in order to mine Rutile.If you didn’t want to use...

Being inspired in pottery can happen anywhere, at any time! In this episode, I talk about 5 surprising sources of inspiration for making pottery that I’ve experienced as a Potter: 💡 - Archaeology books - depicting the shapes and surface decoration of ancient pottery.💡 - Books for collectors of pottery - (or glass!) about a specific pottery industry. 💡 - Food packaging - which often has...

Making neat holes in pottery can be really tricky! In this episode, I talk about the importance of making holes in your pottery at the leather hard stage and tell you about my favourite way of making neat holes in pottery - with a drill bit! You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.✨Support the Podcast-------------------------------Resources for Potters:⭐ Pottery eBooks⭐ Pottery...

Imperfections are a natural part of pottery, and many of these only manifest after a pot has been either bisque or glaze fired. But you don’t need to throw a pot away just because of a minor imperfection!In this episode, I talk about four very common imperfections in fired pottery and simple ways to fix them: ✔️Hairline cracks appearing in pieces of pottery after the bisque firing, in pieces of...

I’ve got very interested recently in making pottery glazes from things that would normally be thrown away. In this episode, I tell you about a stoneware pottery glaze that I’ve made from grape stalks collected over six months from bunches of grapes bought at the supermarket!You can watch the video version of this episode on YouTube.✨Support the Podcast-------------------------------Resources for...

Some potters create coloured pottery by mixing oxides and stains into the clay itself before firing. A technique that uses this is called agate, where different coloured clays are combined in layers and mixed, to create a design. Recently, I’ve been wondering whether this would work with the home-made pigment verdigris created from recycled copper. In this episode, I talk about some experiments...

In this mini episode of the podcast I tell you about a beautiful greeny-brown coloured stoneware pottery glaze I’ve made with ash recycled from incense sticks. Rather than throwing the incense ash away after burning, it can be collected and recycled into a pottery glaze coloured only by the natural trace metals in the ash! The stoneware pottery glaze recipe used in this episode is: 40 parts -...