ClayCraft

Well,depending on how things went, it’s possibly either a relief to get back to work, or you wish the holiday had been much longer! I fall into the latter category, although the mountain of emails that accrues whenever there’s a holiday can be rather daunting, and it does mean that the first week or so is spent dealing with a backlog. I also chose a rather silly time to decide to go through our courses listing and update it – press week, which was also the first week back. I was very pleased to see that although there were some entries that were no longer current, the majority of these were due to retirement and not because of lack of business. In fact, a couple asked to be removed because…

ClayCraft Magazine www.claycraft.co.uk Kelsey Media The Granary, Downs Court, Yalding Hill, Yalding, Kent ME18 6AL EDITORIAL Editor: Rachel Graham; claycraft.ed@kelsey.co.uk Consultant editors: Jacqui Atkin, Kevin Millward Contributors: Jacqui Atkin, Linda Bloomfield, Doug Fitch, Kevin Millward, Lisa Pritchard, Simon Shaw Project photography: Philip Wilkins p.wilkins@btinternet.com Design: Focused On Design Ltd design@focusedondesign.co.uk ADVERTISEMENT SALES Talk Media Sales Simon Hyland, 01732 445327 simon@talk-media.co.uk Talk Media Sales Ad Production Manager: Nick Bond 01732 445325 production@talkmediasales.co.uk MANAGEMENT Chief Operating Officer: Phil Weeden Managing Director: Kevin McCormick Publisher: Mark Winterton Retail Director: Steve Brown Audience Development Manager: Andy Cotton Events Manager: Kat Chappell Print Production Manager: Georgina Harris Print Production Controller: Hayley Brown Subscription Marketing Director: Gill Lambert Subscription Marketing Manager: Nick McIntosh Subscriptions 12 issues of ClayCraft are published per annum UK annual subscription price:…

If you have a news story, product launch or details of some other topical item you’d like our readers to know about, email claycraft.ed@kelsey.co.uk I am now living and making in Devon (having moved mid-pandemic!), and I have studio and teaching space at Art House in South Brent, where I offer regular weekly classes in handbuilding. I have finally fulfilled a very long-held ambition to build a wood-fired kiln using the Trainkiln design. I first saw an image of one in a book on woodfiring when I was studying ceramics at Camberwell Art College in the late 1980s and thought then that if I were ever to build a wood-fired kiln, it would be one like that. It's funny how things turn out. Thirty years later, I had the opportunity…

The world of social media moves so fast that it’s often easy to post something only for it to move down the feed before everyone sees it. So many of you are posting amazing photos of your work on the likes of Instagram and Facebook, and people are missing them. We’d like to resurrect the Readers’ Gallery, so your work can be saved in print and can be seen and enjoyed again and again. To start us off, please send in your favourite piece from 2022, and then we’ll begin a series of themes. Please make sure that the photos are the original, high-resolution versions, and are not taken from your social media posts, or they won’t be big enough to print (smartphone photos are fine these days). Email your…

You will need: ■ 1.8kg (4lb) of clay – earthenware or stoneware, preferably white, for a good colour response when decorating ■ Tools for throwing – water bowl, sponge, cutting wire, rib, batt To decorate: ■ Cuerda Seca wax emulsion with a fine brush for application – see recipe later ■ Aselection of glaze colours to suit clay type Before you begin: This vase is best thrown on a batt to avoid distorting the shape when lifting it off the wheel head, so if you don’t have a quick-fit mechanism for your wheel, you’ll need to throw a pad to secure the batt. When ready, prepare your clay by kneading it well to remove any possible trapped air, then form it into a cone shape, barely dampen the surface of…

Linda Bloomfield is a scientist turned potter. More glaze recipes can be found in her books, Advanced Pottery (2011), Colour in Glazes (A&C Black 2012), The Handbook of Glaze Recipes (Bloomsbury 2014) and Science for Potters (The American Ceramic Society 2017). Her new book Special Effect Glazes, and the second edition of Colour in Glazes are both out now. Linda has recently launched her online glazing course, How Glazes Work, on her website: lindabloomfield.co.uk Rcyclingis something that we can all do to help make pottery more sustainable. As well as re-using packaging materials for sending pottery, it is also a good idea to recycle some of the materials we use for making pottery. Studio potters might worry that the materials they use, clays and glaze ingredients, are mined from the…