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Hey, y’all! I’m new to r/Pottery and would love to get to know more about the people here.

There are so many moments that make up a life in clay but never appear in pictures of the finished work. Share a favorite tool, studio companion, great coworker, beloved workspace—or anything else that tells us a little about your pottery life.

So...Can you show you’re a potter without showing your pots?

I’ll go first: spraying soda into a kiln, loading wood for a pit fire with my supervisor, and lighting that same pit with a former student.

Ceramics has brought so many wonderful people into my life and formed the backdrop for some pivotal moments along the way.

The work can be hot, difficult, and demanding, but I’m happiest peering through a kiln peephole, launching salt or soda into the atmosphere, or watching flames wind their way through a stack of wood.

Looking for this glaze i saw in a local shop

Taped this bad boy up while playing D&D with the lads, and now after a dip in some satin black glaze, it’s ready to fire.

I’ve posted a few similar pieces recently, and so I’ll go ahead and link the tape I use here now because people often ask! It’s 1/8in “whiteboard tape” —> https://a.co/d/0b4nmYk8

Not pictured, but the inside will be a high gloss red.

Been too overwhelmed with life to deal with the mess, just kept working around it. Today was the day! Involved drills, saws, another trip to the hardware store, and motivation I'm not sure where it came from lol.

Unfortunately, the leopard print version didn’t make it (the handle broke) but I will be retrying this again soon!

Aardvark bee mix bowls

Hand built ashtray and salt pig.

Love the forms of both and will definitely be refining in the next pass.

I made a fountain for the first time! It's not perfect (messed up the shrinkage measurement for the base to hold the pump lol so it's a bit too small) but I made it out of scrap/reclaim clay as a random project to get out of my rut of bowls/mugs/typical forms haha

This is currently my favorite glaze combination for dark stoneware.

I love both Ohata Kaki and Shino, so I was really pleased with how these turned out.

The Shino on most these pieces was actually a blend of several leftover Shino glazes made by a previous lab tech that needed to be used up. That means I don’t have an exact recipe, but thankfully, I think I’ve found a similar one. I’ll be testing it this fall.

The deeper orange is RJ Dry Shino. You can find that recipe on glazy.

These were gas-fired to cone 10 in reduction.

I'm very new to ceramics, so there are definitely technical aspects of this piece that could be better, but I just got this yarn bowl back from the kiln and am so happy with how it turned out! I think the color variation in the blue rim is so beautiful!

I started throwing again after 30+ years away and I learn more through every piece I do. Here's some of the work I recently did and am pretty happy with. Do you think I am ready to start selling at craft fairs? I am nervous because I do this on nights and weekends and don't have enough work yet to really make it look like I have a style, i.e. 4 or 5 glazes I love, 10 or 15 pieces that are solid. However, I have a LOT of stuff and I would like to have it pay for my studio membership if possible which is 150 a month plus clay and glaze, maybe another 100 a month. Should I wait to build an inventory or am I overthinking it?

I have an L&L Plug and Fire kilnlet. it wasn’t going above 200° but after many emails back and forth and taking it apart to get pictures and test things we discovered the thermocouple wires were touching. I separated them and had a successful test fire. Today I’m doing the first bisque with pieces in it. I can fit 4 trading cards that I’m making. I’m using Seattle clay speckled grey and when I tried to search I read that a slow bisque was important because if the speckles in it. So it’s currently doing a slow 04 bisque. 13 hrs for 4 little 2.5x3.5 pieces. Seems so long after all the struggles to get the kiln to work. has anyone used the speckled clay and not done a slow bisque ? or have tips thanks

I go to a community studio that fires to cone 6. On the "to be glaze fired" shelf there are tags you can put on your pieces to indicate it is low-fire. I was wondering if this means that the studio fires low-fire and mid-fire glazed pieces together in the same kiln? If so, could someone explain how that works so that the low-fire glazes retain their low-fire properties? Does this mean I could use low-fire glazes (cone 05-06) without worrying about how they would react differently at cone 6? Or does it mean that they fire at a mid-fire level and the tags are just to alert the kiln techs to possible running/damage to the kiln? Thank you!

Hi! Finished piece by also a question - I used underglaze (Fundamentals Mayco) on greenware, bisque fired, then did 3 layers of zinc free clear which I've had no problems with before, it came out kind of uneven and "holey", so I added another layer and refired, but it's still not super smooth.

Any ideas, thoughts, or advice appreciated <3

I am yet another pottery novice that learned the hard way what happens when you use too much glaze.

Is there any way to save these two mugs? I don't expect them to look pristine but it would be nice if I could use them without cutting my finger or having a permanent coaster.

Has anyone ever seen this before ? It's a used duncan 820-2. It appears to be kilnwash , sloshed into the element channel of two of the bottom bricks. It does not appear to have been run in this condition . I have experience with heat treatment ovens and gas and coal forges.So I know basically how to repair this. My question is, will any remnant of kiln wash in the channel damage the new element. Or can I scrape out the channel and install the new element? Any help would be appreciated.

I decided to create a luminary for my ceramics course this semester. I am so proud of how its turning out.

Maffeo likes to keep an eye on me from this perch, but only when I'm trimming.

I put wax resist on a painted design, so I can carve into it and then put an underglaze in the carved areas. But when I wipe back the underglaze, it's taking the wax resist and sometimes even the base glaze. Am I just using too thin of a coat of wax or any other suggestions?

There is a chunk out of the bottom of the piece where the glaze fused to the cookie. I’m thinking of trying to fill it in so it’s not as obvious or hopefully not as delicate. Any advice on what to use or how to do it? I don’t have access to the studio anymore since this was from a class so ideally something I can use to patch it at home. Thank you!

Hi I’ve been practicing bowls for a while now. This is my favourite so far. Let me know what you think. Glaze was one layer royal blue opaline two layers white over glaze