Process

Some potters still collect mud and develop their own personal clay. It’s a labour intensive, time consuming process and it is no longer necessary for each potter to collect and purify his own clay. I buy my clay from a Canadian Company — Plainsman Clay which is located in Medicine Hat, Alberta. The clay arrives pre-mixed and pugged and I need just to wedge it a little and it is ready to use.

The clay I use is named Plainsman M370. It is mid-range white clay that is very smooth and intended to mimic the qualities of porcelain at a lower firing temperature.

I will take the time here to remind you not to believe everything you see.

Take this picture for example. It shows me working away on a bowl at my wheel, and not only is my shirt clean, my hands are barely coated with clay. This is not how things work for me. Five minutes after I sit at the wheel and begin throwing, the clay has taken on a life of its own and can be found just about anywhere on my person.

When I named my studio Clayfoot Crockery, I wasn’t kidding. I couldn’t think of a word that would describe everything covered in clay so I had to settle for clay foot.

I digress.

I fire in an electric kiln - bisque ware to cone 04, and glaze to cone 6/7. Glazes are fired with a slow rise in temperature at the beginning and the end of firing to 2219°F. After a 20 minute hold, I fire down to slow the cooling to less than 100°F/hour until it reaches 1500, and then slowing it again from 1200°F to 900°F. Many clay bodies are fine without this final slow down of cooling but the M370 clay is quite high in free quartz and needs to be cooled slowly through the quartz inversion temperatures. This process takes an average of 20 hours. Then it has to cool back down to room temperature before the kiln can be opened and the pots examined.

I work primarily on the wheel, but do some hand building, using both slabs and extruded clay. Or I may decide to sculpt a piece. For example the clay man was made by first wedging together a very large piece of clay two and 1/2 feet high and about two feet diameter. This clay was then sculpted away to leave a solid sculpture, which was then cleaned out from the inside.