The Devil is In The Detail .

The actual making of a teapot is one thing, but the part I find almost as daunting is glazing them, firing them, and then finally making sure they work properly. In comparison to nearly everything else I create, with something like a teapot, it's crucial that so many things go right. This video, by the way, is the second part of this series, and thus, if you'd like to watch how this teapot was thrown and assembled in really excruciating detail, I'll leave a link on screen now to that video, and in the description below, of course. In that, I discuss not only assembling the vessel, but I also go over many of the small technicalities that hopefully result in making a teapot that pours better. I also tried trimming a new style of lid with the groove in the top that encircles it, to hopefully create an additional point of interest that the glaze itself can flood into. I really love the challenge of creating teapots, but typically I always find them a bit of a struggle, as in comparison to everything else say mugs, or bowls, or lidded forms, or vases, I typically make far fewer teapots. This means that on the whole, they aren't a shape I'm as practiced with, and every time I make a batch, I feel like I'm still learning something. Some things have really improved lately. For instance, the shapes of the spouts I create are feeling more in tune with the vessel as a whole, as with previous iterations, I think I had the tendency to make the opening slightly larger, which, for me, took away from their elegance as a whole. It's not a bad rendition of the drawing, although this quick sketch was never meant to truly represent the object I created. Rather, it was drawn just so that I could roughly visualise the object I was creating. Anyhow, I'm really excited to see how the glaze interacts on the new style of lid. The only part of making these that I think I might need to change soon is how the spout links to the body. At the moment, I've just been piercing holes in the wall without altering the wall itself prior, and as a result, I can only pierce so many holes within the footprint of where the spout attaches. This is a limiting factor, perhaps, as in some cases, I think I need more throughput in order for the teapot itself to pour better, and thus when I next make a batch of teapots, I want to try adding an additional component, which is essentially just a semisphere pierced with tons and tons of tiny holes which is attached on the inside of the vessel leading into the spout, but more on that when I next make a teapot. Now, the first thing I do once this piece has turned bone dry is clean over the exit wounds on the inside of the teapot where the holes were pierced. I simply take a sponge on a stick, and I rub over the holes, scraping back the tiny burrs of clay that tend to surround them. They turn to dust, essentially, which I can tip out, and the reason I do it at this stage, rather than say when the pot was leather-hard, is if I rubbed over the holes like this when they were leather-hard, the burrs of clay that end up being removed could easily just be shoved back into the holes, or they could smudge and smear over them, deforming their shapes. Bone-dry clay is really brittle, and if rubbed enough, it literally just turns to powder and comes off. If you forget to do it at this stage, you can also sand over these holes after they've been biscuit-fired, but it's a slightly trickier task, unless, of course, you have the right tool for the job. The next step is biscuit-firing these pots. This electric kiln takes them up to 1000°C overnight, turning clay into ceramic, a much harder material, which is also slightly porous, which is necessary for the glazing process. It looks good, although there is a chunk of metal right at the tip of the spout, which I imagine will cause some level of discolouration when the piece is finally production-fired. The next step is waxing certain parts of the teapot. These can be trickier forms than most to wax, as, of course, you have to contend with the appendages that are spinning around. Essentially, the wax just creates a barrier, it's a wax resist, and it means when it's dipped in glaze, the glaze won't adhere to these areas. For this process, I use a wax emulsion, which I water down, just as it helps it brush on a bit more smoothly. And now it's the turn of the lid. I aim on firing these two components together, after all, and this means in order to separate them, I'll have to place something called wadding in between them, which I'll show you in more detail a little later. The important thing to know is that wadding can't really touch glaze, otherwise the glaze will melt and stick to them. Thus, I'm waxing the underside of the lid and the rim of the teapot to create a region of bare clay where I can place these waddings. If you do happen to spill your wax on another part of the vessel, the best thing you can do to remove it is to simply bisque-fire them a second time, but if that's not possible, you can burn it away using something like a heat gun, and even try and sand it off, but there is a chance that it will leave some residue on the surface. You may think that waxing the foot of this will be difficult, but if I set the lid down first and then slot the pot on top of it, it raises the body of the teapot up so that the appendages aren't getting in the way. This is just one of the things I really like about the styles of lid I create, as because the lid isn't inset within the body like many more traditional lids are, it means that my lids can often be used like a chuck in order to help processes like this. Or, even at the turning stage, I can simply slot the lid into the body, and now, as it sits so proud, I can simply trim it in situ, which in a way makes it easier to match to the body underneath it, as I can see the two parts together the entire time. Whereas with other styles of lid, you may have to turn the lid by itself on the wheel head and occasionally offer it up to the teapot on the side to see if it fits. Essentially, it just streamlines certain processes, although that was never really my intention when I went down this aesthetic route. Lastly, I cover the base in wax, as if this portion was covered in glaze, and I placed it directly on a kiln shelf, the glaze here would melt and fuse the pot in place. Unless, of course, I raised it up in the same way I willed the lid, but even if I glazed the bottom and raised it up on waddings and fired it, once fired, I'd have to carefully grind the waddings back, and I'd be left with a few very distinct marks on the bottom of the pot. Once the wax is dry, it's time to glaze the teapot. In order to coat the body, I simply clasp it using a pair of tongs, and quickly submerge it, pushing it under with a finger, which means I don't have to use as much pressure with the tongs, as these can potentially crack through the walls if you attempt to maneuver the teapot around when it's full of glaze, as it becomes very heavy. Once it's removed, I give it a quick shake and I keep it moving for a few moments, just so the glaze settles into a roughly even layer. But the thing is with teapots, due to all the different shapes and how the glaze can flow over them, it's incredibly rare that after I've lifted the teapot out and poured away the excess glaze, that I'm left with a really clean, perfect surface. In fact, with teapots, it pretty much goes without saying that the body portion will be quite messy. The lid, on the other hand, is much easier. It's simply dipped in, and then I pull it out whilst keeping it upright, and I shake it really vigorously, so that any drops that cling onto the waxed underside are dislodged. At the same time, I'm purposefully letting glaze pool onto that top surface, so that it fills the groove I trimmed there. You may have noticed that the hole pierced in the centre of the lid has been blocked. I'm going to have to fix this, of course, as if I left it blocked, the teapot would pour terribly, and I'll be able to show you a really good example of why that is at the end of this video. Sometimes, if I let the pot dry out too much whilst I'm holding it with a pair of tongs, as those tongs are removed, it can tear away a small fragment of glaze where they were, so I just quickly patch those up here. It's now the following day, and you can see how uneven the glaze is on one side of this piece. I'll be scraping back these drips to create a surface that's more flush, and probably out of all the pots I make, it's tidying up teapots that takes the longest, especially if the hole in the lid or in the body are clogged up. In order to level out the drips on the exterior surface, I tend to use a really sharp, flat metal scraper to very carefully scrape them back, bit by bit, until they're flush with the rest of the surface underneath them. My main concern when doing this type of work is accidentally grinding away too much glaze, as this creates a thin patch which will show really obviously once fired. Thus, if I ever do take away too much, I simply dab some extra glaze over that area, let it dry, and then scrape it back again. These feldspathic crackle glazes I use are really sensitive to how thickly they're applied, and compared to perhaps more traditional glazes, it has to be applied much more thickly. At the same time, the glaze recipe itself doesn't contain much clay, which means that in the process of actually dipping the teapot, the glaze never settles into as neat an even layer over the vessel. Both of these add up to make a glazing experience that's actually rather difficult. It's incredibly time-consuming, but those extra minutes spent perfecting the surface really do make all the difference. With those drips and other inconsistencies roughly removed, I now use my finger, like sandpaper almost, to rub over the surface to correct the smaller inconsistencies there were. The foot ring is next, and as I trimmed a very intentionally flat surface around the outside of the foot, I can easily glide my knife along this like a guide, which makes this step at the tidying up stage easier, as there's a really clear boundary between the clay body and the glaze. It's a sharp edge as compared to a curved one, which simply makes it easier to identify the outer boundary of the foot ring. Like I mentioned earlier, any glaze left over on the foot here could potentially stick it down onto the kiln shelf, which means that this part is cleaned carefully and with a lot of precision. The body isn't quite finished yet, but I'll quickly get the lid done, as there isn't quite so much work to do here. The first thing I do is clear the air hole in the centre. This isn't a task I do just by jamming the needle through it, as by doing so you could potentially chip a ton of glaze away from the underside, like an exit wound from a bullet hole. Instead, I work the needle in very small concentric circles, slowly grinding away the excess until I've cleared all the way through. And lastly, I tidy up the underside of the lid in much the same way as I did the base of the teapot. Throughout this process of glazing, I always work over a very specific basin of water, one of which I have for each of the specific glazes I use. This way, any dust that comes off and the glaze that's rinsed off with the sponge is saved and can eventually be reused. The next very annoying step is clearing the holes on the inside. I do this with a bent piece of wire, which essentially I shove into each hole and twist around, in much the same way I did with the needle when clearing the hole on the lid. A thinner glaze wouldn't clog these up nearly so badly, and I forgot the step where you dab some water over these holes before the piece is dipped into the glaze. If you do that, it saturates the body somewhat, and it means when the piece is submerged in glaze, a thinner layer of that glaze adheres to the regions that were already partly saturated with water. The final step is tidying up the rim of the teapot. To do this, I place the pot on a bat. This way, I can still tap center the object. I do this by maneuvering the bat until the rim of the piece is centered. This way, I don't have to tap center the object by striking the glazed surface, which could potentially damage it. And lastly, I use a damp sponge, almost like a piece of sandpaper, to grind away any glaze that's still clinging to the wax. I find by doing this step on the wheel, I'm able to achieve a really neat, even line. Just make sure to wrung out the sponge regularly, and to keep it saturated. Otherwise, it can stick quite easily to the glazed surface, which would pull the piece off center. The next step is propping the lid up using wadding. By the way, what this stuff is, how I prepare it, and how I use it is the topic of a video I've created, a link to which I'll leave on screen now, and in the description below. I roll the wadding out into a coil, and then cut it into these tiny rounds, and I find that it sticks onto the waxed surface really easily. And essentially, I just place these spaced evenly around the underside of the lid. If you are struggling to have them stick, I usually just press them against the damp sponge, which wets them slightly, making them stickier. I then slot the lid very carefully on top of the teapot's body, making sure that none of the lid is actually touching the teapot. Instead, I want it to sort of just float above it, with the waddings being the only part that Once in situ, I press the lid down very gently, just to hold them in place, and then it can be packed into my Roda KG340 gas kiln, with almost 100 other pieces, ready for my reduction firing to cone 10. In this firing, the pots absolutely cannot touch, otherwise their glazed surfaces will turn to glass, and they'll stick together. This firing lasts about eight and a half hours, and compared to the electric firing previously, this one is entirely manual. It's also fuelled with gas, which means there's flame, and it's this that opens up another world of alchemy, so to speak, as at a certain point, it allows you to place the kiln into a state called reduction. This is where you intentionally starve the kiln of oxygen, a process I do by increasing the gas pressure, the air pressure, and by closing the damper on the back of the kiln to be half-closed. Inside, this causes the gas to burn inefficiently, as the exhaust can no longer escape through the flues and out through the chimney quick enough. This means there's too much fuel in the chamber, and there's not enough oxygen, which means the burning fuel, in an attempt to burn more efficiently, has to strip oxygen away from the clay and glazes themselves, and it's this that creates very specific colours that you can only really achieve with kilns that have fire inside them, like this. There are ways of reduction firing with electric kilns, but it tends to degrade the heating elements, or you have to create saggers you place work in, which you fill up with combustibles. In the eastern world, there are also kilns that are more specific to this process. They're electric, essentially, but they have a small burner port that, at a certain temperature, you can stick a burner into to initiate reduction that way. They aren't common in this part of the world, but I've heard of a few manufacturers who might be considering this approach soon. Once cone 10 is flat, at roughly 1300 degrees celsius, the kiln can be switched off and allowed to cool down slowly for a couple of days. There's always a lot of anticipation in this moment, but after unpacking so many kiln loads of work, you tend to have a good idea of roughly what's going to come out. The light in the workshop is really blue at the moment, hence why this piece appears quite saturated in tone. The extra indent in the top really works, I think, although what a place for a random blot of bronze to appear. Maybe making this from my reclaim wasn't the best idea, but I like it. Its angularity really works, and that small additional detail on the lid does give it a bit more visual interest. The teapot isn't quite finished yet, though. The first thing I have to do is gently crack the lid off, and then pop any remaining waddings off the stoneware. The next thing I have to do is polish the base of the teapot, because, as grogged stoneware like this fires, it shrinks around those coarse particles of grog the body contains, which have already been fired. Thus, anywhere there's bare clay sort of becomes rough again, which means the bottom of every single pot I make has to be given a quick sand. I do this with a relatively fine diamond pad, just to remove the coarse scratchiness the clay body might have, as the last thing I'd want is for somebody to drag this vessel across a wooden surface, and for its foot to scratch it. When I'm making lidded wares, I tend to trim the lids so they fit really tightly at the leather hard stage, but this does mean that they occasionally don't quite fit, which, ultimately, is a good thing, as it means I can use this stuff, chemical valve lapping paste. I smear it on the underside of the lid, and then I'm going to grind the two parts together really vigorously. This grinds away any of the stoneware that's causing the lid to not fit properly, and it means I can create a really glassy smooth finish between them, with a lid that sometimes fits with almost an airtight seal. The paste is essentially just carborundum suspended in gel, which means it's like a greasy sandpaper, almost. Of course, this does come with the downside of having to wash this greasy stuff off of the vessel. I remove the worst of it using toilet paper, but there isn't actually much left anyway, as when I'm grinding the lids of a whole heap of pots, I scrape the paste off one piece and add it to the next. This way I'm not using new paste for every single vessel, as that would become really wasteful. I then use hot soapy water, and I give the pot a really good wash, with most of my focus being on where that grease was applied. These long grinding sessions aren't the most enjoyable, and it's one of the really rare occasions where I'll watch a movie or something as I'm working. The next day I noticed that the teapot wasn't sitting quite flat, and thus in order to correct this very slight teetering, I gently press the pot down against the diamond pad on the wheel with some water underneath it. This grinds away a very small portion of the foot, and it normally only takes a second or two to remove enough in order to completely fix it. The piece no longer rocks, although due to its narrow foot, it does tip over more easily as compared to a vessel that has a wider base. And finally, at long last, I can see how well this teapot pours. Okay, it's not perfect, I'm gonna flow, but the stream of liquid projects with a good amount of ferocity, and it doesn't drip or sputter as the liquid comes out. Of course, as the pour reaches the end, the stream does become weaker, but otherwise I'm really happy with how this works. I can also now do the really interesting test, which is covering the hole at the top whilst pouring. As I pour, air is being pulled into the vessel, replenishing the cavity that's left inside as liquid exits through the spout. And thus, when I cover the hole, the liquid should stop pouring. As if air can't fill that cavity through the hole, it's instead trying to enter it through the spout, and it's this that causes the teapot to glug and sputter, or cease pouring entirely when this hole is covered. But as soon as that hole is uncovered, the teapot pours wonderfully. And this is why that pierced hole in the top of your teapot is so crucial, and it's especially true if you have a lid that fits really well. By the way, throughout this entire process I was also making the second teapot, and the pour in this one is slightly more even, although aesthetically I much prefer the first piece. Anyhow, I'm really happy with this pair of new teapots. I think stylistically they're really getting to a point I like. They feel elegant and refined and slightly different, and I think there's some room to play with in terms of how the lid works. The additional groove in the top creates another ring of colour, and it's another concentric circle this vessel has many of. The only downside perhaps is this touch of carbon trapping that occurred right around the tip of the spout. I think the throughput needs to be slightly better, hence why I should try adding that new addition on the inside to allow the tea to pass through more quickly. These are all notes I've made for when I next make a batch, and with that, thank you so much for taking your time to watch this week. Teapots really are difficult pieces to make, and as you can see, I still definitely don't always get it right. Each batch is a new learning experience, and I think that's a really good thing in many ways. Thanks again, and I'll see you next week.