Porcelain: Difficult to work with? I make a Breakfast Set to find out

Currently in my studio I'm working on a small commission making the breakfast set in porcelain. I want it to be fine and elegant and I'm going to show you some techniques that I use to accentuate the beauty of the porcelain. I haven't used this particular porcelain before and when I make my prototype I run into quite a major problem and I have to troubleshoot to find a solution. So let's look at the whole making process. I start by preparing my clay. Porcelain is of course a white fine grained clay. I'm using a mid-five porcelain that has a firing range of cones five and six. I'm using 950 grams for the plate, 600 grams for the bowl and 350 grams for the cup. I'll start with the plate. The first thing I notice is the smoothness. It feels almost creamy. My clay is reasonably soft and in spite of this the porcelain feels as if it has a solidity to it. I'm hoping this will be useful when I start making the bowl and cup. For the plate however I'm not really pushing the clay too much. I bring the clay out wide to the diameter of my plate and then I open out. I'm not using much water and I'm deliberately avoiding over wetting. Porcelain is known for its tendency to crack so I want to make sure that I keep the moisture content really even. I don't want to oversaturate the clay and when it comes to drying I'm going to take a lot of care. For the same reason I spend time compressing the base. I'm using my fingers, you could do this with a rib and I start to form the walls. My plate is a very simple shape. I'm after a very simple form here and I don't want to overwork the porcelain. I trim around the base and now I smooth and finish the rim. For these pieces a fine rim will really add to the feeling of lightness. Then I add a swirl. This will give a bit of glaze variation and highlight the delicate pale blue glaze. For me the finishing is very important when working with porcelain. I'm really paying more attention to the details. So I set aside my plate and I start work on the bowl. So I start to center. I'm really enjoying using this porcelain. It's a mid-fire version of a porcelain I'm very familiar with. When I was making production work I used this type of porcelain to make many fine coffee cups. So the mid-fire version feels very similar to work with. So as I pull up the walls I'm using my fingertips. I feel as if I have a lot of fine control here. I've linked my hands together for greater control. As my fingers travel up the wall to the rim I'm conscious of the thickness of the wall. So I have the heart of the bowl. Now I can shape and this is where I love working with porcelain. I feel as if I can really stretch the walls. I compress the top a little to keep it even. I trim a little around the base and then I use my flexible rib to get a very rounded shape to the bowl. I finish working on the outside and I add a little bit of a swirl. Now I finesse the rim. So once again the rim is quite important particularly on a bowl. So now I can set aside to dry. I leave these pieces just a little before I wire through. So I take the final piece of clay and a center for the beaker. So once again the beaker shape is very simple. The same principle applies as to making the bowl. I want the walls to be slightly thicker at the base and then taper towards the rim. I don't leave a lot of clay at the bottom of these pieces. I'm not going to trim a foot ring as such and aside from the thin rim I want the thickness of the walls and base to be quite even. This will help avoid some of the problems with cracking. So as I pull up I can really feel the thickness of the clay with my fingertips. Once again I'm not using too much water as I don't want to oversaturate the clay. I compress the rim every time I come to the top. Although I want a fine rim I'm going to thin it out at the end. So I've pretty much reached the height that I want and I'll use my flexible rib to smooth the wall and provide a gentle curve. So the ribs shaping on the outside and my hand on the inside is gently pressing the porcelain. Then I trim around the base and then I smooth the walls with my rib. I check the size and then I spend a little time refining the rim and with a cup this is most important. So I let these pieces sit a little and then wire through and then set aside to dry to leather hard. So my pieces are dried to leather hard and they're ready to trim. I'm using a giffin grip but I could equally center and fix with clay lugs. This is a pretty simple trimming task. I trim around the outer edge and then a little down the wall. This is just tidying up and finessing the outer wall a little and then I trim the inside. I work from the center out to the outer edge. I'm really just creating a depression in the base so that my bowl sits well and now I just want to smooth the base and the surface I've just trimmed. So I use my fingers and my flexible rib. I finish all my pots whilst they're still leather hard. This really minimizes the need to ever sand work. So now that I'm happy with the finish of the base of the pot I flip the pot and take a look at the rim. So right side up I go over the rim with a wet chamois and that's it. I set aside to dry. The process for the cup is very similar. I trim a I'm speeding this up a little and finally I'll flip the cup and finesse the rim with a chamois and I set aside to dry. Finally the plate. I'm using a small piece of foam to keep the base of the plate from deforming as I trim and the base is very similar to that of the bowl just wider. So I start in the middle and trim outwards. You get the idea. I'm going to speed this up as well and once I've finished I flip and refine the rim. I dry carefully and then bisque fire. I think this is where my problems start. I'm using a clear gloss with a turquoise stain added. I've used this glaze many times. It's versatile and has a wide firing range. I always stir glaze thoroughly. So important and one issue that can be fairly major when applying glaze when dipping. Glaze ingredients settle and if not properly mixed just before you use it you may be dipping your piece largely in water rather than the glaze ingredients. I start with the bowl so I pour my glaze into a bowl that's slightly larger than the bowl I want to glaze and then I dip and pour the glaze out and now to glazing the cup. I'm going to pour glaze on the inside of the cup and then glaze the outside separately. I do this for finer pieces as to prevent the bisque becoming over saturated when glazing. Fine pieces glazed in one go may not fully dry or the glaze may bubble. Now for the outside and I carefully dip the piece right up to the rim. Notice that I've put a basin underneath to catch any overflow. I set the cup aside and pour the glaze into the basin and I'm ready to glaze the plate. I'm using tongs. I lower the plate into the glaze and swirl the glaze around to completely cover the plate and that's it. Of course I still have to clean the bases carefully and then I fire to a cone six. So even though I fired to well within the range for both the clay and the glaze, my glaze came out really blistered. My suspicion was that it was over fired in spite of the instructions. I checked with the manufacturer and they made a few suggestions. Bisque higher, clean the ware in case of soluble salts and build in a slower cooling. But after testing I found I just needed to lower the glaze temperature. This puts the firing temperature on the low side for this mid-fire clay. So I think it's time to do some glaze experimentation but that's for another video. And to finally finish the pieces I give the bases a wet sand. This makes them wonderfully smooth to touch. So here we are with my key points on making the most of porcelain. Simple design can accentuate the material. Work with the material. Try throwing with little water or try throwing with slowly and work efficiently. Create finesse by paying attention to the details. Take into account timing, control drying and careful moving of pieces will ensure they don't crack or warp. And pay attention to the finishing along the way. If you like this video you might enjoy my video on making my signature pasta bowl. And as always happy potting!