What is the Necessary Pottery Equipment?

admin — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 01:37:21 +0000

If you’ve been looking for that one hobby or leisurely activity you can do for the rest of your life and not get tired of, you may just need to give pottery a try. And if you intend to, you will need to know the necessary pottery equipment for you to make your wares.

A lot of materials and equipment are used by potters, especially those who are already masters in the art. In reality, there are only three necessary pottery equipment and they are the kiln, wheel, and a clay processor.

Firing is the most important part of pottery because it transforms your molded clay into ceramic material which you can then use for decoration or really serve a specific function such as holding water or anything else you need in storage. People from ancient times, when pottery was still a new art, used pits when firing. Either the fire was below and the pottery was baked over it, or the pottery was placed beneath, accessed from a different place below, and the fire is above so the heat isn’t directly applied to the wares.

Today, however, most pottery undergoes firing inside a kiln, which is essentially a container that functions much like an oven but with higher temperatures (in the thousands), the heat created either by burning fuels or the use of electricity.

The second necessary pottery equipment is the potter’s wheel which, even if you don’t know what a potter exactly does, should be familiar to you as it is the equipment associated with pottery the most. There are human-powered wheels and electric ones. The latter, controlled through a foot pedal that powers the wheelhead’s rotation, is more commonly used today.

A clay processor can actually be any equipment that can be used to turn dry clay into its usable form, and is the least important of the three especially if you’re only into pottery for your pastime as only potters doing large amounts of clay work will require their own. You can buy commercially prepared clays for your pottery hobby