Blue Clay & Glaze Experiments—Making Pottery for the Financial Times & Nikkei

Strap in, this weekend's video is a lengthy one! About six months ago I was asked by the Financial Times, to create some pots, (mugs and pourers), for a travelling teahouse to celebrate their ten-year anniversary ownership by Nikkei.

Nikkei's brand colour is a navy blue, and thus that's the type of glaze they were after and in this film, I'm documenting that entire process, from all the testing, both in terms of clay and glazes, then there's the actual making of 200 stoneware cups too, from throwing them, trimming them, attaching their handles, glazing them and finally reduction firing them to cone ten, (1290ºC).

SOME of these will make it onto the online shop soon, but do sign up to my newsletter or follow me on Instagram for more concrete announcements.

Thanks for watching!

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🏺 • If you want to learn how to throw a pot, you might like my 'A Beginner's Guide' series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2WJhtTF0eGhQwf8g2LHcom_KrvJpH_JT

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⏱ • Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction
0:44 - Experimenting to create a blue clay body
6:30 - Blue glaze test tiles
9:46 - Glazing the test cups
11:08 - The results of these test cups...
12:05 - Throwing 200 cups
15:31 - Trimming 200 cups
17:14 - Handling 200 cups
30:50 - Stamping the cups
36:07 - Biscuit firing the cups to 1000ºC
38:14 - Waxing the cups
39:25 - Glazing the cups
41:25 - Tidying the glazed surface
44:22 - Packing my Rohde KG 340 gas kiln
45:55 - Reduction firing the kiln to 1290ºC, (cone ten)
47:35 - Unpacking the kiln & the initial results
50:38 - Sanding the cups bases
53:41 - Wrapping the cups

*I throw using both a Rohde HMT 500 & 600 potter's wheel and fire using Rohde kilns too, the electric is a TE-200 and the gas kiln is a KG-340.
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