Clay & Steam

teapots, glazes and a kiln in a shed

A four-cup stoneware teapot, lid off, waiting for the next bisque.

This is where I keep the notes that would otherwise be lost on the backs of clay bags: what a spout did when it was cut at sixty-eight degrees, which glaze crawled on the second firing, and how long a teapot can sit on the shelf before someone asks for it.

One potter, one kiln, thirty teapots a year

The workshop is a converted shed with a wheel at one end, a small electric kiln at the other, and a bench in the middle that has never once been clear. Stoneware clay, thrown and trimmed, handles pulled and left to stiffen overnight, spouts cut when the body is leather-hard. Nothing here is moulded and nothing is imported; the only machine in the room is the kiln.

On the bench now

Notes from the bench

• 2026-05-21Five teapots out of the last firing, four good. The fourth has a hairline at the handle join — my fault, I rushed the join and knew it at the time. It will go on the shelf here rather than out to anybody.
• 2026-04-30Recut the spout on the tall pot. Sixty-eight degrees is right for pouring and wrong for looks; at sixty-one it pours down the outside of the body on the first pour and then behaves. Sixty-eight it is.
• 2026-03-22New batch of clay, slightly short. Handles pulled from it need a slower dry or they crack at the join where they were scratched and slipped.
• 2026-02-09Kiln elements replaced. Two of the old ones had sagged enough to touch the shelf, which is why the last two firings were cool on the top and hot on the bottom.
• 2025-11-18Packed everything up for the winter. Twenty-nine pots sold this year, which is about as many as one pair of hands makes without rushing the drying.

A teapot that dribbles is a teapot that will be left in the cupboard. The spout is the whole pot, and it is the last thing anybody looks at properly.

How a pot actually gets made

Clay wedged, thrown on the wheel, then left covered overnight until it is firm enough to trim. Foot ring turned, body burnished, spout cut from a short thrown tube and set on with slip and a scratch across both surfaces. Handle pulled from a strip, left to stiffen on the bench, fitted the following morning. Then a slow dry under cloth for a week — the part that cannot be hurried and that most of the cracks come from — followed by a bisque, a glaze dip, and the real firing.