Systems, surprises and renegotiation

Studio: systems

It takes 4-6 weeks for Sunken Studio to fire, glaze and pack pots made on courses at the studio. If you’re planning handmade pots as gifts for this Christmas you’ll need to enrol on a course that finishes before November 7, which means starting next week!

Our next multi-week pottery making courses start the week beginning 3 October 2021. We’ve also just added a few extra throwing and handbuilding tasters too.

Availability overview for October 2021

Process: surprises

Evidence of a mobile glaze… when pots become fused to a shelf the pot(s) is never really a concern. It’s a gonna however you look at it. It’ll be dangerous to handle. We do however worry about the shelves the pots were sat on. We chip off the pots, grind off the glaze (wearing appropriate PPE - it’s razor sharp glass stuck to alumina hydrate & china clay AKA batt wash).

After removing the glaze we reapply batt wash. It is a refractory layer that acts as a protective barrier to stop any stray glaze damaging the kiln shelf.

In an ideal world we wouldn’t have to grind shelves. One of Chris’ best studio buys was the cordless angle grinder.

Hey ho, ceramics has its fair share of nuisances. We joke about the shelf of shame. Nobody wants to be responsible for it. We always clean bases and test: test clays, test glazes, vertical surfaces, horizontal ones… sometimes, things still surprise us. Uh… what? Start again? Or maybe use it a starting point for something else...

Discover: renegotiation

Neil Brownsword’s exhibition, Alchemy and Metamorphosis, examines the innovations and ingenuity of North Staffordshire’s early ceramic industrialisation through a range of contemporary practices and perspectives. 

18 Sep 2021–30 Jan 2022 10:00am–5:00pm, The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery

https://www.britishceramicsbiennial.com/app/uploads/2021/08/Alchemy-Metamorphis-.pdf

Image: Josiah Wedgwood's trial trays