Unlike when using commercial materials, and you can just open a bag of powdered ingredients, there is a long process involved in preparing rocks for use in glazes. This marks the second stage in my… Preparing rocks for glazes

Last year I was fortunate to be able to go out a few times with the archaeology teams that were running a series of digs as part of the A14 redevelopment. As land was cleared… Roman kilns next to the A14

Biaxial glaze tests. I’m using the enforced lonely time in the workshop to do various things, including expanding the testing of clays and rocks that I have recently collected. I have a slab of plaster… How to make test tiles for glaze tests.

I built my little bourry-box as a small test kiln so that I could fire samples of new rock glazes and also clays that I collected in different firing schedules than I use in my… The old must give way to the new

Hoping for a glorious out-of-school-holiday summer break in Cornwall we spent the first two weeks of September exploring our most south-westerly county, as the storms and squalls relentlessly rolled in from the Atlantic. Luckily the… Winter comes early in Cornwall

After the unpack, grinding, polishing and cleaning from the last firing, and the pinging noises of crackling glazes has subsided, I start to photograph the pots. My nervous adrenaline has dissipated and I am able… Drips and blushes

….is not gold. It’s probably mica! I was being optimistic thinking that the rock I collected a couple of weeks ago from the same parent body but 40 miles away from the place I visited… All that glitters

What better way to start off the new year and shake off that post-Christmas torpor than a few days walking in the Cumbrian National Park? The previous week’s snow held off, as did the rain.… Winter in the Cumbrian Mountains