Working with clay is tremendously versatile, and this book brings a sound knowledge of the main ceramic methods to both the novice and the practising maker wanting to extend their approach to design and technique. Each chapter features a rich array of step-by-step explanations, brought to life with examples of contemporary work. Ideas range from a thrown cup and saucer, a hand-formed interpretation of the human figure, a press-moulded jug with sprigged decoration, and slipcast vessels with the distinctive crackled surface of raku. Accessible and inspiring, the book uncovers both the practical essentials and the creative secrets of working with clay.
This practical, accessible approach to ceramics, with step-by-step instructions and photographs, introduces techniques that form the basic vocabulary for your work.
Discover how to develop your pottery design skills and bring your ideas to life from start to finish. Covering every technique from throwing pottery to firing, glazing to sgraffito, this pottery book is perfect for both hand-building beginners and potting pros. Step-by-step photographs - some from the potter's perspective - show you exactly where to place your hands when throwing so you can master every technique you need to know. Plus, expert tips help you rescue your pots when things go wrong. The next in the popular Artist's Techniques series, Complete Pottery is the ideal companion for pottery classes of any level, or a go-to guide and inspiration for the more experienced potter looking to expand their repertoire and perfect new skills. With contemporary design and ideas, Complete Pottery Techniques enables the modern maker to unleash their creativity.
Practical Pottery is setup to teach you the essential photographic reference for beginners. Filled with the basics on getting started, equipment, materials, clay constructions, and more, this book offers insight into embarking on a new creative adventure. You'll learn: - A step-by-step photographic sequence guide to be as comprehensive as possible. - projects that range from beginner to expert allowing you to put the new skills to work. - Include 70 projects that reflect new and old concepts from Jon's wildly successful YouTube channel. - Highly photographic
Examines the standards of and the various clays, pigments, and glazes used in Japanese raku, English slipware, stoneware, and Oriental porcelain, showing students how to adapt designs to local conditions
The material for this book arose from the author’s research into porcelains over many years, as a collector in appreciation of their artistic beauty , as an analytical chemist in the scientific interrogation of their body paste, enamel pigments and glaze compositions, and as a ceramic historian in the assessment of their manufactory foundations and their correlation with available documentation relating to their recipes and formulations. A discussion of the role of analysis in the framework of a holistic assessment of artworks and specifically the composition of porcelain, namely hard paste, soft paste, phosphatic, bone china and magnesian, is followed by its growth from its beginnings in China to its importation into Europe in the 16th Century. A survey of European porcelain manufactories in the 17th and 18th Centuries is followed by a description of the raw materials, minerals and recipes for porcelain manufacture and details of the chemistry of the high temperature firing processes involved therein. The historical backgrounds to several important European factories are considered, highlighting the imperfections in the written record that have been perpetuated through the ages. The analytical chemical information derived from the interrogation of specimens, from fragments, shards or perfect finished items, is reviewed and operational protocols established for the identification of a factory output from the data presented. Several case studies are examined in detail across several porcelain manufactories to indicate the role adopted by modern analytical science, with information provided at the quantitative elemental oxide and qualitative molecular spectroscopic levels, where applicable. The attribution of a specimen to a particular factory is either supported thereby or in some cases a potential reassessment of an earlier attribution is indicated. Overall, the information provided by analytical chemical data is seen to be extremely useful for porcelain identification and for its potential attribution in the context of a holistic forensic evaluation of hitherto unknown porcelain exemplars of questionable factory origins.
This book addresses the contributions made by analytical chemistry to the characterisation of 18th and early 19th Century English and Welsh porcelains commencing with the earliest reports of Sir Arthur Church and of Herbert Eccles and Bernard Rackham using chemical digestion techniques and concluding with the most recent instrumental experiments, which together span more than a hundred years of study. From the earliest experiments which required necessarily the sacrifice of significant portions of each specimen, which may already have been damaged , to the latest experiments which needed only microsampling or the non-destructive interrogation of valuable perfect specimens a comprehensive survey is undertaken of more than twenty manufactories of quality porcelains. The correlation is made between the quantitative elemental oxide determinations of the scanning electron microscopic diffraction and Xray fluorescence data and the qualitative molecular spectroscopic Raman data to demonstrate their complementarity and use in the holistic forensic assessment of the origin of the fired procelains ; this will form the groundwork for the adoption of analytical techniques for the attribution of unknown or questionable procelains to their potential source factories . The book will also examine the perception of what constitutes a porcelain and its definitions and examines the assignment of porcelains to types which currently employs the definitions of hard paste , soft paste , hybrid , magnesian and bone china from the conclusions derived from the analytical data and a consideration of the raw materials employed in their manufacturing processes. During the discussion of this analytical evidence several themes and protocols have been established for its utilisation in the potential identification of porcelains and several case studies undertaken for this purpose are cited. The book will be of interest to analytical scientists , to museum ceramics curators and to ceramics historians.
This book gives a detailed account of the holistic research carried out on the analytical data obtained historically on the products of the Nantgarw and Swansea porcelain manufactories which existed for a few years only during the second decade of the 19th Century. A background to the establishment of the two factories, which are linked through the persons of the enigmatic William Billingsley and his kiln manager, Samuel Walker, involves the sourcing of their raw materials and problems associated with the manufacture and distribution of the finished products. A description of the minerals and additives used in porcelain production is recounted to set the scene for the critical evaluation of the comprehensive analytical data which have been published on Nantgarw and Swansea porcelains. For the first time, the author has adopted a nondestructive technique, Raman spectroscopy, to interrogate perfect samples of Nantgarw and Swansea porcelain, as well as a selection of shards from an archaeological excavation carried out at a waste dump at the Nantgarw China Works site. Following these experiments, several questions relating to the porcelain bodies of Swansea and Nantgarw china can be answered and a protocol established for the preliminary evaluation of items of suspect attribution to confirm or not the correctness of their assignment to these Welsh porcelain factories.
