What makes handmade ceramics so precious..

Here is a little synoposis of what goes into making your ceramics. There are few reasons why it takes a good four weeks to produce what is being made. Firstly, drying times vary greatly according to the time of year. Clay can be a fickle beast and care must be taken for the clay to dry in a calm and timely matter otherwise your hard work will be for nothing with a cracked surface from drying too quickly. So it can take a couple of days, particularly if you are joining parts of clay together. The first firing - called a bisque firing, takes around eleven hours and then a similar time for the kiln to cool down. The work is then glazed. The second firing is a little faster and takes on average around 9 hours. We then may have a third firing if the work is being finished with gold lustre. The other thing to take into consideration is that the kiln needs to be full to run…thus it takes time to prepare sufficient work to do this. And so…that’s a little of what is involved from a time perspective.