I'd like to get started making pottery at home. I enjoyed my class on pottery when I was in high school, but they never taught us the ins and outs of finding electric wheels, kilns, the different types of clays and glazes, and where to find all the supplies for making it at home. If anybody can be of help here, I'd be forever in your debt. Thanks much. Jason
It would help to know more about what area you are in, what you enjoyed in your class, what resources you have outside of your home (have you checked into available pottery recreation classes with your local colleges or community adult ed, or have you been to the library?), etc.
If you are in a rural area you can get away with doing pit fires and such that will cost you little in the way of an investment for supplies. You can do wonderful handbuild pieces and fire them in an old oil barrel or do a sawdust firing in a brick bin. You can do lowfire work with an electric kiln but the kiln itself is a major investment (electric work, the kiln, the furniture will run around 2K). If you are in an area where there are a lot of potters you can pick up used equipment. Do you want to do handbuilding or are you set on using a wheel? Do you want a kickwheel (you can make it yourself) or an electric wheel (again a cost of more than a few hundred $)?
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There really is so much information to share that it is difficult to know where to begin without knowing more.
Hi, I started my studio with about $500 and was able to get a moderate sized electric kiln and a wheel that included 600 pounds of clay. We found the kiln at an auction, but I often see them in the classifieds in the paper, probably because people getting out of the molded ceramics business sell them off. The wheel was a bit more difficult, but with diligence, I found one through an ad on the bulletin board of a local community center. The people answering the phones at these center were very kind to check the ads for me when I called, so I didn't even have to drive around to do it.
Good luck!
Well, I live in a small town in northern Iowa, and we've got pretty restrictive laws on burning anything, so pit firing's probably out. I didn't mind coil pots and other hand-made styles, but I prefer making pots on the wheel. Kick wheels are out, thanks to a recurring injury to my kicking knee. I checked my local public library, but since my town's small, just about all I found was related to methods indians used hundreds of years ago. OUr local art museum is closer to a house of cheap knock-offs, and I think they discontinued any art classes they offered a couple years ago. Shoot, the only few hobby shops in town only sell that oven-baked or no-bake kids clay and pigments, and there's no kilns or wheels to be had in this town. In short, the net's about all I have to get the inside details that was never taught in school. I'll give that site a visit though, and happy holidays to you.
The lowest prices I found for new equipment was bennet pottery but they don't seem to exist on the web anymore. Their phone is listed as
800-432-0074. I found EBay to be pretty useless but if you watch it faithfully you might catch a bargain. With used kilns you need to search for one close to home.There isn't one aspect of pottery that I don't like. How can you possibly get bored with something that has so many different facets to it. From recycling, building tools, throwing, trimming, making handles, the art of glazing and then the adventure of the fire you have completely different worlds to explore. For anyone that is a natural scavanger, pottery is a wonderful excuse for making something out of nothing. I made my own bats by gluing two layers of scrap luan together cross grained, drill the holes and coat them many times with polyurethane (it is especially nice because you can put them on the wheel and draw ink rings on them before coating them with urethane if you want to use them for centering). I never throw out a credit card. They make great clean up tools (won't scratch your plaster wedging board or bats) and can be cut to use for shaping rims or putting on decorative edges. Garage sales always have useful odd and ends to make into tools. Old buttons, seashells, weird cooking tools, toys, etc. can make great stamps. Old silverware makes useful tools. I am a very big fan of plaster boards but you can certainly live without one. A scap piece of cement board (what you use for the backing of tile in showers) makes a perfectly fine wedging board (it just doesn't suck up the moisture from the clay so you have to let it air dry to the right consistency for wedging rather than wedging it to dry it out). I will forever be grateful to Steve for sharing his way of recycling clay which is to dump the wet clay into a leg of an old pair of levi's that has been tied off, hang it up to then let it dry to the right consistancy for wedging. I have plastic gunny sacks that I put in a 5 gallon bucket which I put my broken up dry clay in. When a bucket gets 3/4s filled I pour hot water in the bucket with a bit of vinegar and let it soak. I then lift the sack out of the bucket, letting the excess water drain away and hang the bag to dry to the proper consistency for wedging. I would have never thought to do this without Steve sharing his method. Speaking of buckets, I go to bakeries, food stores, etc. and beg them for their emptied buckets (pickle buckets really do eventually lose their aroma). Builders will have goop buckets you can ask for.
Since everyone has different ways of doing things (which is in my mind what makes it an art), giving specific directions seems to defeat the purpose of you finding your own grove. I guess I would say that if you have room for storage don't worry about being in a hurry to get you kiln and glazes immediately but instead would recommend that you just start with clay and start building up your work. If throwing is your goal, then you might get your wheel right away. Don't be stingy about your work. Clay is really easy to recycle. If the piece doesn't feel right, wedge it up, wrap well in plastic and sit it aside to use another day. At the same time, if you know you have lost a piece or it doesn't feel like something you want to keep, don't just stop with it but push it to the limits. See what you can do with collaring or compressing the clay. Cut it in the middle vertically so the you can look at your walls and foot. The more hours you put into the work the sooner your skills will develop. If you are feeling frustrated, change what work you are doing. There are always chores that need done with potting, whether it is breaking up your clay that has been dried for recycling, oiling your tools, making tools, or just general cleanup.
Again, I really like my shimpo Whisper but you can get less expensive wheels that are just as good, especially if you are not planning on throwing big things for some time (though I find throwing big much easier than small (- I have tiny envy compounded with HUGE envy).
As I said, so much to share (much more than you will want), so little time. Donna
P.S. Welcome to the clan
wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...
What if the original poster lives in Portugal??
Touche!
Although you won't have the same proliferation of suppliers in Portugal that there appear to be in the United States or the UK for that matter, there must be suppliers of Potters materials, as Portugal is not bereft of potters, I have met several of them. Searching in the Portuguese equivalent of the Yellow Pages will undoubtedly turn up something or someone who can help.
Let us know how you get on.
Steve Bath UK
In article , Jack Ouzzi writes
They posted that they live in a small town in the midwest (USA). The question was asked where they live because that is critical to some of the info given.
I know a potter from Portugal that I can ask for information if the query was meant in that way (I interpreted it in another way...).
Hey, thanks. Wow! That site's got lots of info that I found helpful. Man, I never knew kilns were quite that expensive though, nor that I'd have to become an electrition just to figure out which one to buy. And since its been 6 or 7 years since I've done any pottery, I think I'd better start at the beginning. I'm thinking about getting a wheel and some of that oven-fired or no-fire clay to practice whith, to get my touch back, so to speak. Thanks for all the great suggestions! Jason
You might also check with any small schools in your area. We are in central Iowa also, and there are a lot of school mergers going on, you might find a used kiln that is no longer needed, or is being replaced with a larger one to handle more students. (Be careful, some schools are wired for 208V and most homes are 240v the elements are NOT compatable with the incorrect voltage.) We lucked out and got a kiln from a small rural school who ordered their art department to git rid of their kiln/pottery class after they came back from a 3 day weekend and the kiln that they had started up on the last day of school before the break was still firing when they returned. They had a closed-bid auction and my wife put in a bid of $50 for a 7cuFt Paragon with an Electronic controller. We got it home and found that everything was in fine condition, except two of the elements were broken, hence the kiln could never get to it's final temperature so it was still firing after 3 days.
The broken elements were right at the terminals, so I gently stretched the elements and re-attached. It works fine, and for $50 with an electronic controller, we didn't do too bad.
As for Ceramic supply places in Iowa, there is only 1 I know of with any equipment, it is over by Dubuque, but I haven't been there for 10 or 15 years, and if memory serves me right a lot of their primary business was in cast greenware & molds. (I wan't into ceramics at the time I was there.) There is also a ceramics store of sorts in Waterloo, they sell bisque ware & glazes (Mostly Mayco) They also sell Skutt kilns but not wheels. Since you are in Northern Iowa, for a "real" ceramics supply store where you can go look, touch & feel, I'd suggest Minneapolis. There is Continental Clay Company
Continental also has a *much* larger selection of books available to peruse through.
I know both locations have wheels available in the show rooms.
Brian
Hi Jason :-)
I just started my own little studio-room in my basement a few months ago. I found that working with the clay and glazes is plenty for me at the moment, so I have deferred getting a kiln - as I am lucky enough to have my pottery-teacher's studio (with 2 ovens) just a couple of minutes away, and she fires for me (for now, anyway).
I would suggest you have a look around and see if you can't find some active potters nearby that might be willing to fire your stuff for you - both bisque and glazed. It will cost a bit, but you will have to fire a helluva lot before you have fired up the price of a kiln - even a used one, I think.
I bet there are pottery suppliers that will ship either to your home or to a store in town. Have you eg. asked at the hardware store or hobby store (if there is one near you)? A good idea if you buy clay, is to buy a lot at once, then store it - as most suppliers give you a good rebate if you order bulk.
As for tools, you can make a lot of them yourself - like cutting string - just a piece of fishing line and two pieces of wood.
The bought stuff I have in my studio are a wheel, a slab roller and an extruder - bought in that order. Nowadays, I mostly hand build, as I find I don't have enough shelf space to dry stuff if I work on the wheel (you produce more pieces at a time, I find).
Marianne
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