Florian Gadsby

You’ll be well acquainted by now with the bronze I’ve occasionally been using in my pottery, mostly I’ve been adding sprinkles of it into my reclaim, giving it a good mix, and then proceeding with processing it like normal, spreading the reclaim out on plaster batts and then thoroughly wedging it once dry enough. This means there’ll be a few seldom crimson dots in the next batch of mugs or bowls. Yet, in this video, I’m going for something altogether more dramatic by wedging a handful of the metal into a single larger lump of clay, which I’ll throw into an angular vase with a linear protrusion. Yes, the results will likely be utterly overwhelming and red, yet the idea is that these vibrant pots standalone amongst the rest, especially when displayed. They draw your eye across a collection of arranged pieces and give their surface a lot of character and depth, interest really. The throwing of these is the easy part, as the shards do just sink and disappear into the stoneware, but it’s the trimming stage thereafter, once it’s turned leather hard, that’ll be considerably trickier. The fragments skitter and scratch the surface, resulting in careful trimming with lots of back and forth, correcting gouges, filling them up and smoothing the surfaces with gentler tools, such as plastic kidneys, as compared to the metal ones I usually use, but more on that in the next video! ##bronze##metallic##satisfying##craft##ceramics##pottery

This week’s video marks the start of a new series of material tests. I’ve blended tungsten, two grades of tourmaline, malachite, and small sharp shards of obsidian directly into my high iron stoneware clay. Each material brings its own texture and density and I’m curious to see how they respond to the process of shaping, drying, and eventually, the reduction firing.   You can watch the fully narrated process now on YouTube. It’s a detailed look at how I incorporate these materials into the clay and how they behave during the early stages of making—or you can find a direct link via the Linktree in my profile’s biography.   In the longer video, I focus on the first stage: wedging the materials into the clay, throwing five test bowls, and trimming them once they reach the right dryness. If you’re familiar with my YouTube channel, you’ll know that much of my work follows the slow rhythm of ceramics. Results don’t appear instantly and these bowls now need time to rest and dry before they can be reduction fired to cone ten, at 1290ºC. I’ll share the final outcomes once they’re ready, likely in a few weeks.   The raw materials were kindly provided by Devon, also known as @sophisticated_pagan. He handcrafts beautifully precise tungsten carbide trimming tools that I wouldn’t dare use on the tungsten inclusions wedged incorporated into the clay in this video…   #glaze #test #experiment #pottery #ceramics #handmade

Here’s one of the most mundane processes that occasionally happens in the workshop. We’ve all been there, warped bats, it happens to all of us at some point. It’s generally for this reason that I try my best to never leave work on them for too long, or soak them in water as they’re scrubbed clean in the sink. I recently threw some really wide dishes that I had to leave for a long weekend in the workshop still attached to the bats and come Monday, they had warped to hell.   Yet, there is a technique of sorts I use to flatten them, as otherwise throwing on these leads to pots with strangely shaped bases. I begin by scraping all the clay off of them, then I soak them in very hot water, (and some mould-killer, as after being left for 3 days straight wrapped in plastic some had grown). After ten minutes and after the MDF has softened, they’re taken out and I stack some very heavy buckets of glaze on top of them, pressing them flat. It works pretty well, (I’m sure there’s better ways of doing it), yet in a pinch and after a night of drying out being squashed like this, it gets most of them back to being perfectly flat, with another few about 90% of the way there.   Damn things, I think one aspect in my workshop that’s due an upgrade is my bat system.   #pottery #howto #potterytutorial #clay #oddlysatisfying #asmr #handmade

These lined vases aren’t too tricky to glaze, the key is not letting it adhere too thickly over the form, otherwise the line itself can be easily overwhelmed and partly hidden. I know I’m glazing this the other way around from how it’s usually taught, but I have my reasoning for this. The pressure needed to submerge the vessel is considerable, and if the interior was already glazed as I did this, there’s a chance the internal glaze would be chipped or damaged in some way. So instead, I coat the outside first, then, when comes to lining the inside, I simply pour the glaze in, swirl it all around and then tip it out whilst rotating it, the key is handling the exterior very delicately while not accidentally whacking my hands into the thin glazed line. The above is a challenge, but with practice it becomes relatively easy to glaze pots cleanly. By the way, all the excess dust that’s scraped off will eventually be sieved back into the larger containers of glaze the vase was initially lowered into. The sieve gets rid of any wax that’s inevitably shaved off the foot-ring, together with any other bits of debris that find their way into those basins. The collection you see at the end are all recently made vessels, lined pots that work wonderfully in larger groups like this, or at least I think so. #pottery #vase #oddlysatisfying #ceramics #asmr #ceramic

I’m not having the best luck with this glaze lately. Essentially, vessels coated in this mossy green colour can’t go anywhere near the edges of the shelves on the upper layers in the kiln, otherwise this is bound to happen, glaze peels off the foot and fuses to the kiln shelf these are reduction fired upon.   Thankfully, there is a way to fix it. It’s not a perfect solution but it’s a way of salvaging the vessel and giving the foot a bit more character. I use a combination of @diamondcoretools diamond grinding disks, a sticky pad to hold them down, and some smaller diamond blocks, to grind back the flowing glaze back to a profile that’s acceptable. I also use a @dremel to sand back the glaze on the inside of the footwell.   There are two very important things for me when I do this. The first is to smother the vessel and whatever’s doing the grinding in water, to eliminate dust but also to act as a lubricant and to move the debris out of the way, thus making for a neater, smoother surface on the glass. Secondly, and simply, care and attentions paramount here. If I were to let the diamond tools skitter across part of the vessel that wasn’t damaged, then that renders it a second, or a third, this means that this entire process is done with extreme caution.   I spent three years polishing the bottoms of practically every pot produced during my apprenticeship with Lisa Hammond, soda-firing will do that, yet it’s a skill that paid off as I find myself doing this more and more.   #qualitycontrol #satisfying #polishing #ceramic #pottery #asmr

Here’s the bronze imbedded vase from a few days ago, thrown from a lump of clay flooded with fragments of metal. I wish you feel the sensation of trimming this through a video, the tool’s blade bounces constantly as I work, colliding with the hard shards and trying it’s best to chatter on the surface, thus the trimming is slow and careful and controlled with a tremendous amount of back and forth.   When there is a particularly scratchy surface, I find the best way to fix it, is by sponging over the surface with a soaked dense sponge and then compressing over this with a plastic kidney, as it has a smoother edge. I’ve sort of fallen in love with these Mudtools sponges, especially the dense ones, as they barely leave any texture when run over the clay and thus simply soak it, which makes things like burnishing easier, but it can also help to leave a neater surface post trimming, as long as it isn’t done excessively so.   What I mean by that, is that when working with a grogged clay body, if you sponge at the surface for too long, you’ll erode the top layer of clay and expose all the tiny sharp fragments of grog, (and bronze in this case), leaving you with a rough surface. It’s for this reason that I don’t typically sponge down my work post trimming, (when they’re off the wheel), but a quick once over like this can-do wonders to knit together the surface and to create a neater form.   #pottery #vase #craftsmanship #trimming #ceramics

In my YouTube video this Sunday, I'm making a shape that has been very requested, from beginning to end—it’s an absurdly simple form, a low and wide store jar, thrown on wooden bats and trimmed within an inch of it's life, well the lid at least. (You can find the fully narrated, 37-minute long film, by tapping the Linktree in my profile’s biography and by clicking the YouTube option at the top). Fundamentally they should be easy pots to create, yet any object when refined to this level is difficult to make, you don't have to push things to the sometimes absurd level I take them, but it's a challenge I relish. I'm throwing and trimming seven of these jars in total, with a number of tips and tricks dropped into the narrative that hopefully help you make your own lidded forms with more ease. Hereafter, I discuss the biscuit firing, waxing, glazing and reduction firing to cone ten and finally, and perhaps the most important step of the entire process, the lids are carefully pried off, as the wadding mixture I use can get rather stuck in place when heavily reduced, so the lids are tapped off with a hunk of wood, the waddings are then removed, and finally the lids are ground in place using greasy Chemico valve lapping paste—all before washing the stuff off with hot soapy water. There’s a lot to these vessels, despite their minimal appearance and I’m already eager to make a second batch soon, as I always figure out so many subtleties that could be improved upon… Thanks for watching! #pottery #jar #handmade #clay #maker #ceramics #reductionfired

If you’ve been following me these past months you’ll have seen the struggle with this black stoneware, well, this is the final test for a while, with one successful bowl made intentionally thick and fired in a cool spot in the kiln, as if placed on the upper shelves and fired to a hotter temperature they have the tendency to slump…   I thought I was being clever raising them up on waddings, (these are the white clay-like feet I attach to the bases, made from 50% kaolin, EPK and 50% coarse alumina hydrate), not only to prevent the black clay from plucking slightly, this is when clay of the pot is ripped away by the kiln shelf, but also to allow the gas to escape the enclosed foot-ring, as this manganese-packed clay off-gases, creating a pockmarked surface.   Not only did that not really work, but the clay became so plastic at top temperatures that the vessels started to sink into the waddings they were being fired on. This meant they were absurdly difficult to remove and I had to resort to chipping them away with a tungsten carbide tipped scraper before thoroughly grinding the bases flat on a diamond pad to remove any residue leftover from the white waddings. For one of these this meant grinding back beyond my maker’s mark, that’s how much the foot sank over them.   With my usual stoneware these waddings just pop off the surface with a tiny amount of pressure, which made this discovery rather fascinating as I’ve never run into this problem before!   Anyhow, three bowls, some mottled, made with two twirling stoneware clay types, (an accident), with only one that I can truly call a success. Thanks for reading and watching!   #glaze #pottery #oddly satisfying #ceramics #asmr #craft

Let’s get two things out of the way, first, here’s my wadding recipe:   50% coarse alumina hydrate, (you can use fine but the wadding ends up denser and potentially harder to remove and 50% kaolin, (I use EPK). The raw materials are added to a bucket and I drape a wet towel over it, then I stick an arm through and blend the powders, (the damp towel/cloth stops the dust from escaping). Once mixed I add water SLOWLY, as this combination tends to turn from quite a sturdy, clay-like consistency to a runny mess in moments, so don’t slosh in lots of water thinking it’ll be fine, do it gradually.   I then wedge it up like normal and store it in an airtight bucket.   The second thing is yes, I know I could use my potter’s wheel for grinding the lid. The thing is, the applied force isn’t just pushing the two together directly, instead as I grind, I twist in a few different orientations, sometimes polishing away at the horizontal flange of the lid itself if I feel it’s scratchy. This is hard to explain… but I’m not just pressing one against the other, there’s more nuance to it than that, despite it not appearing obviously so.   This all leads to a considerable amount of clean-up on the finished pieces yet it’s NOTHING compared to years apprenticing with Lisa Hammond, I can’t even begin to describe some of the horrific wadding removal processes, the white lumps trapped within layers of glaze and molten clay. I’d sit for hours with a Dremel delicate grinding away at the bases of pots—a task that has to be done without a single mistake, as the last thing you want to do is scratch glaze that doesn’t need it.   #satisfying #asmr #pottery #handmade #jar #crafts #qualitycontrol

Narrow cylinders are the subject of this weekend’s YouTube video. These are tricky shapes and for a long time the bane of my life, as I threw them finely and dried them improperly, leading to wonky cylinders that were impossible to trim without wanting to pull my hair out. By way of making this ‘easier’, I changed the way I create these shapes to better fit my making style and that’s precisely what the fully narrated 21-minute film is all about; a link to which you can find in my profile’s biography through the Linktree link.   You’ll often hear me speak about the importance of drying work out evenly and slowly and recently, this gradual approach has become far more prevalent in my work. When I first setup my workshop after graduating from my apprenticeships, I think I was used to making work that was on the slightly thicker side, (think of the Maze Hill Pottery standard ware range if you followed me back then). Pots like this can often take being left out overnight without too many issues, as long as you’re strategic about it, yet when I started producing my own pottery in my own studio, for a while I was really pushing finesse, thinly thrown vessels that I’d then briefly trim. I’d throw these narrow cylinders and leave them out overnight and by morning they’re be perfectly leather hard, but they’d have also lent over in the direction a draft hit them, making them practically impossible to trim to my liking.   Thus, over the past year, I’ve begun drying pots out more slowly, in a far more controlled manner, together with leaving certain portions of them hefty, such as the rims, as this helps the vessels hold their shape as they turn leather hard. Then, I can trim the pots to my exact liking without having to worry about too much ‘movement’ in the form from improper, or too rapid, drying.   That’s what this video covers, the technique I’ve developed for creating these narrow shapes, together with discussing the absolute importance of the INTERIOR form, which again, was another quality I was perhaps overlooking. All of that, and much more, can be found in my latest YouTube upload! Thanks for watching.   #vase #cylinder #howto #pottery #ceramics #potterytipst

With narrow shapes like this it can be tricky throwing them very thinly, it’s a challenge to your hand inside and to lift all the clay up properly, yet that’s what I used to do. I’d even use a range of throwing sticks, stuffed inside, which I’d pull the clay up against. It worked and created some wonderfully airy cylinders, yet I found as I dried them out, they’d often develop a lean as one side of the thinly walled vessel dried out faster than the other. This then meant they were a pain to trim as I was essentially trying to work around this defect. You’ll notice potentially if you own an old cylinder of mine, it may have a jaunty profile.   To mitigate this, and to make throwing faster, I simply make throw a thicker cylinder these days. Is it lazy? Perhaps, but as I maker I’d rather do the refinement at the leather hard stage, and if it means drying them consistently and straight is something that’s less of an issue, then fantastic, as the thicker cylinder is far less likely to be influenced by a draft or slightly irregular drying.   The chunkier lip helps hold the piece straight too and I can really focus on throwing an internal shape that’s straight from top to bottom, then I just turn the exterior form to match that.   I know this method of making isn’t for everyone and I don’t do this for every type of pot I make, but for me it has led to more consistent work and straighter cylinders. You do you.   #pottery #vase #flowervase #clay #satisfying #handmadecraft

This step is often like carving or sculpting, it’s the process of refining scruffy edges and ridges of unwanted glaze, working it back to a flush, smooth surface. It’s a vast time sink but something that must be done otherwise the pots themselves appear clunky and smothered in glass once fired.   Of course, some pots are worse than others and therefore require more time, this bowl for instance was glazed in two goes, (first the outside and then the inside), and where the layers overlap, they often create bulges, seams, like that you see me fettling back in this video.   Other pots, such as mugs or smaller bowls, barely need any refinement, save for scrubbing back the tong marks and making sure the foot has been sponged clean. Nonetheless, it’s a process every single vessel I make undergoes and it can’t be skipped and thankfully, very little is actually wasted as everything that’s scraped off can be sieved back into the larger containers of glaze these pots are initially dipped into.   #asmr #satisfying #glaze #pottery #glazing #ceramics

Everything in this video holds true, you won’t end up with ruined plate like I did, that was down to my own carelessness after the fact. When I last made hundreds of soap dishes, as they dried, I’d gently press them down in the centre in order to keep them flat. As they were so small I think they could take being manhandled like this, yet of course, flatware like this is an altogether different story.   I’d trimmed these, them dry out overnight beneath a canopy of plastic sheeting and then, the following morning, when the platters were still leather hard, I lightly pressed them down with my palm in the centre, leading to hairline cracks forming on the underside. I lost six out of seven. You’d think after fifteen years potting I’d no longer make mistakes like this but it happens.   Alas, at least these shapes are quick and easy to throw. Soft clay is key, and what I’m making are essentially just thick discs of clay initially, I don’t have to worry too much about how precisely they’re made at the thrown stage, it’s when trimmed that a majority of the refinement is done.   All that’s to say, with this next batch, I won’t dare touch the things until they’re bone dry.   #fail #satisfying #clay #ceramics #pottery #craft

It’s been a while since I’ve added a new video to my ‘Beginner’s Guide’ series on YouTube, so this week I felt compelled to cover another topic in agonising detail and this time it’s the very simple process of levelling an uneven rim—you can watch the longer, fully narrated tutorial on my YouTube channel, which you can find via the Linktree in my profile’s biography.   The first important thing to note about an uneven rim is that ultimately, depending on the severity of course, it isn’t something to get hung up on. I often make pots that have slight undulations in then lip, it happens to every maker, and you can either deal with it immediately, at the throwing stage, or, like I often do, I wait until the leather hard stage to trim it away.   In the longer video I show five different techniques, four involving tools and one that requires only your hands, together with discussing why these undulations appear in the first place, which could be down to poorly wedged clay, inconsistently centred clay, or uneven movements during the throwing process itself they can also be created by tiny air-pockets or from wiring the vessel off the wheel.   I think each of these five techniques is useful in different situations, one isn’t simply better than all the others, and I find myself flitting between them as I craft pots. So, if you happen to click over and watch the longer video, thank you, and if you’ve got any other methods for fixing a wobbly rim, I’d love to hear about them!   #pottery #tutorial #howto #ceramics #handmade #process

In this weekend’s YouTube video, a link to which you can find in my profile’s biography, I’m making a batch of miniature pots. Okay, they aren’t super tiny, but they’re the size I need as totem-toppers for the towers of pots I create, scaled-down vessels that are light and that can be positioned with groups of vessels, or larger versions of themselves, to create interest. Plus, who doesn’t not like a minuscule store jar? There’s something so sweet and delicate about them and they yearn to be held. It’s interesting, small pots like this are almost as much of a challenge to create than larger vessels, especially as I’m trimming them to the same degree as my larger pots, which means they’re superbly fiddly vessels to make. Tungsten carbide blades help, as these mean I don’t have to apply as much pressure and still the tools carve the clay away nicely, meaning the shapes of the pieces aren’t comprised, which is something blunt tools may very well do, crushing the pots potentially as you attempt to press the blade in enough. These also much easier to throw, if you can get past the initial terror that’s centring a piece of clay this small, (likely 50-60 grams). It’s a hard task and one where I’m practically only using the palm of my left hand to centre and cone the tiny lump of clay, so, in the fully narrated video, I demonstrate a few alternative techniques to centre bits of clay this petite. As always, you can find the full video via the Linktree in my profile’s biography and thanks of course for watching! #miniaturepottery #pottery #satisfying #craft #ceramics #clay

There are two good things about packing up pots for shipping out, first, it clears space in the workshop, second, it provides ample time to devour audiobooks.   The beginning of this week was spent wrapping up some 180 pots in total, not tons but not too little either, a task that would be made all the more efficient if I didn’t have to ‘breakdown’ the raw packaging materials I order in. For instance, the paper bubble wrap and the corrugated cardboard need to be cut down into thinner, more useful strips, a process I’m sure a machine could do really well in a more industrial setting but here we are. The best machine is an apprentice, as Ken Matsuzaki told me once.   Two layers of the paper bubble wrap are swaddled around each mug, TIGHTLY, yet you can’t put too much force behind folding it around the object as the pressure can cause things to snap or crack. Then, this bundle is surrounded with a shell-like layer of corrugated cardboard, this makes it into a neatly protected package, which will eventually be boxed up and surrounded by starch packaging chips, no pots near the walls of the pots and no rattling, those are the rules for the final box-up.   For now though, I’m going to go rest my abraded hands and take a nap.   #pottery #postage #satisfying #asmr #craft #SmallBusiness

If you’d like to see how one of these types of jars is thrown, glazed, and reduction fired, that’s also the topic of my much longer YouTube video this week, a link to which you can find in my profile’s biography by tapping the Linktree.   These stepped jars feel like monolithic objects, yes, akin to pillar boxes, like pointed out a few days ago, but they also feel like columns of sorts thanks to the ledge in the lid. The lid itself is monolithic too, it was thrown excessively large without much thought save for the internal vertical flange, the actual part that slots into the jar, all of this means I’ve got a good amount of clay to turn through until it’s carved back to a more appropriate shape, good thing clay is so recyclable, yet I think it does sometimes lead to lazy making.   I’m using a whole heap of tungsten carbide trimmers in this video, made by various toolmakers, @sophisticated_pagan, @rd.pottery.tools @kjtoolsandglazes and @tortugatools. It’s funny, even with so many, each has its use for specific shapes and sections of these pots. I also, in my head, keep note of how sharp certain blades are, which can make them better or worse for certain processes. Devon’s, @sophisticated_pagan, trimmer is used for the initial pass when thinning the wall, it’s extremely sharp and when held steady and pressed in hard the clay curls away in beautiful small ribbons. Satisfying doesn’t quite do it justice.   #pottery #satisfying #clay #asmr #craft #maker #ceramics

Here’s the creation of a low, lidded jar, minus of course perhaps the most important part of the process, the actual throwing of the two components, there’s always one step I forget to film… I knew the rim of this would eventually warp, either when drying or when reduction fired, for that reason throughout this process I made sure the lid was on the hefty side, in fact I purposefully trimmed it fractionally wider than the opening, this way once reduction fired, I could grind the parts together with Chemico valve lapping paste until it spins in-situ perfectly. It’s also why I fire the two parts together, well, it’s one of the reasons. By having the lid in place like this, held up by the white waddings, it braces the fine rim of the body portion and helps to keep it round. Yet, this isn’t the main reason I do it, there’s also the fact that it saves ample space in the kiln, especially with lids this wide, which are practically plates, but it also means the two parts match, in terms of how they fire, as when reduction fired like these are, there can be some subtle variation in way of colour and texture through the kiln. This just makes sure they match. #howto #pottery #ceramics #handmade #asmr #maker #craftsmanship

If you’d like to watch a far more thorough explanation of the creation of these bowls, then you can find a link to a 30-minute YouTube video precisely about that via the Linktree in my profile’s biography. I cover each step in rather excruciating detail, together with discussing my changing aesthetic ideals in regard to my own work and how I’ll throw and trim these differently when I make a second batch as there as ALWAYS qualities that can be improved.   In fact, I’ve thrown a few more even larger iterations that have been slowly drying beneath plastic on the workbench—I like them to be very evenly leather hard becoming starting the exacting turning process and altering their shapes, which can be a challenge given how thick their feet are. Due to this, I’ll often flip them upside down and then I cover the rim section tightly with plastic, leaving the thicker foot portion exposed to air dry for a day or two.   Inevitably, as the foot itself is so thick, there’s no way it can be completely the same texture throughout, so I’ll often blast the foot with a heat-gun as I trim, to keep the internal clay from being too gummy and constantly clogging tools. I edit this out of my videos generally, but I can’t tell you how much time I spend pulling clay off the blades of my trimmers…   Thanks for watching!   #oddlysatisfying #pottery #asmr #craft #ceramics #handmade

If I’m being honest, the glazes I use typically stay precisely where put, that is, expect for this relatively new mossy green glaze that I’ve started using recently. Apply it too thickly, fire it too hot and this is what it does, I’m sure we’ve all been there, thankfully, unlike the mugs this happened to recently, where the glaze itself on the base of the interior bubbled into tiny craters, the inside of this vase was absolutely perfect, so all that needed to be done was some thorough grinding on the foot.   I use a tungsten carbide tipped tool to try and flake off the worst of the waddings, (these are the white feet the vase was fired upon), and to make sure I don’t accidentally miss and scratch the glaze, I position my thumb right in the way, protecting the glazed portion of the pot. Yes it gets whacked, but the amount of force I’m using isn’t enough to break the skin or really hurt at all for that matter.   Next, I use a variety of @diamondcoretools for grinding away the excess glaze on the foot, I start with diamond discs on the wheel, which are fantastic fun to use, although it’s a tricky process to see what you’re doing, hence why I’m hunched over at such a level.   After this, I use a few different diamond studded blocks of various grades, to work back the damaged area by hand. This final touch makes a big difference and it lets me be far more accurate as compared to polishing on the wheel.   And that’s the vessel back to a first, if the base of a pot is cleaned up and ground away properly without and excessive or accidental glaze scratching, then I generally sell the piece at the usual price, but I’ll of course include photographs of the tidied-up area so people know what they’re getting.   #pottery #qualitycontrol #fail #asmr #ceramics #handmade #vase