Welcome
to my Ceramic Workshop & Showroom.
Come
to see the whole process of making ceramics!
Clay comes in plastic bags. I use clay from
Greece but not from Zakynthos as the zakynthian clay is not suitable for my
work; it is low fired (around 700oC), light yellow (ochre) in
colour, and it is only good for tiles for the roofs and for big pots to keep
olive-oil, wine and food inside. Clay I use is high fired (up to 1280oC),
white in colour and painting shows better on it.
There are special factories which take the clay from the ground remove all the
external materials and make the first step of preparation. Although clay is
pug-milled from the factory it needs more preparation before we can use it to
make ceramics.
The first step is to remove all the air bubbles, with special equipment (pug
mill) . If we don' t remove air, ceramics will broke during
firing.
Mill compacts clay and in this way most -if not all- air bubbles are removed.
Clay also becomes more firm and more plastic.
Clay comes out from the mill in the shape of bars.
Clay bars need to be cut in pieces according to the size of the items we want to
make.
In order to make things of the same size we have to cut clay in pieces of
the same weight.
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