Florian Gadsby

You’ll have to watch until the end to see the difference grinding the lid makes. This process comes around every few months, after firing a couple of times, once I’ve accumulated enough lidded wares. Then, each has its lid ground in place using Chemico lapping paste, (meant for engine valves), the excess removed, then the whole lot is washed thoroughly in hot soapy water. Even though I burnish my lids at the leather hard stage to a glassy smooth finish, once reduction fired, there’s always a certain amount of grog/texture, in the clay, that makes itself present again. The clay shrinks around these already fired particles, revealing them, and creating a rough surface, hence the awful noise the lid makes initially. Equally, if there’s any movement during the firing, this could cause one component to not quite fit with the other. Regardless, I make my lids tight on purpose, this way, once fired they can be ground into place like so, meaning they fit perfectly. A few notes: I only ever use this paste on bare clay, it never goes on the glaze. I wouldn’t recommend using it with terracotta, or a porous clay body, as the residue can be tricky to remove. When I’m working on a batch of lidded forms, I’ll apply the paste onto one lid, grind it, then take that same paste and spread it onto the next jar, and so on, and so forth. This way one tiny pot of the paste can last an age but it does eventually become less effective. It’s a satisfying, loud process, best done with headphones on and a good distraction to relieve the monotony. #asmr #satisfying #pottery #craft #teapot #ceramics

Preparing an angular vase for its reduction firing, starting by thinning out excess drips around the rim to create a flush, even surface, otherwise, once fired it could look rather bulky around the fine lip. Then the walls beneath are given a once over, the glaze just lightly fettled with a metal scraper and finally the foot is given a proper clean, to remove any pesky drops of glaze that have settled onto the wax, and to create an even, clean line, all around the bottom. I got through about 35 hours of audiobooks last week by sitting and doing this, for vases, bowls, mugs, teapots, everything. It’s quite engaging work, yet it’s tedious and it’s unbelievably easy to make a mistake, not to mention that with smaller vessels, the hand that grips the pot to keep it steady as I work, is tensed for hours on end and that can quickly become quite uncomfortable. Rest assured, if and when I begin taking on apprentices, I hope they enjoy glazing… #glaze #pottery #vase #handmade #asmr #craft

My YouTube video this weekend is all about spouts… from pulling them, good ways to practice, optimal rim thickness and even how you can use butter to fix how one pours in a dire situation. I even demonstrate a few other shapes of spouts that are outside of my repertoire, to give a better sense of the breadth of styles. As always, you can watch the fully narrated film via the link in my Linktree! I also preface this film with the fact that making spouts is likely my weakest skill when it comes to making pots. I learn more about them every time I make them and producing videos like this helps even more, as I have to inspect my technique and think about ways of conveying skill and how to make a lip that pours neatly, which frankly, is a real challenge. Thanks for watching!

It's been a while since I’ve posted something like this. A short compilation of recent failures, be it pots trimmed too thinly and being squashed or sliced in half, vessels coming loose on the wheel as they’re trimmed, a terrible, wobbly spout that’s crushed and a large lidded jar being smashed that fired horribly, as if soaked in tar. All of these are part of being a potter, or any craftsperson really, failure persists and thankfully clay is easily recyclable, up until it has been fired at least, whereupon you need to get a bit more creative. The shards can be used in mosaics, placed in plant pots to help drainage, ground to a fine powder and added back to fresh clay and thrown with or even used as fragments in a terrazzo of sorts in combination with poured concrete. All the clay from pots destroyed before they’ve been fired can simply be soaked down into a slurry, spread out on plaster that draws out the excess moisture, and then the whole lot can be kneaded up into a usable consistency. #practicemakesperfect #pottery #ceramics #fail #blooper

You’d think after 15 years of making pots I’d stop doing this, yet inevitably, every few kiln loads, there’s always a pair stuck together, that’s front loaders for you. Sometimes pots are hidden behind props and even other pots, and even though I load them in with a hand behind them, I sort of cup the vessel, this way I can feel how close to load a pot inside, when I can’t see the gap behind them, does that make sense? I rely on touch, not sight, in some situations. Both will be ground clean and used in the studio’s kitchen, it’s about time I eat from some of my new shapes. #satisfying #pottery #ceramics #blooper #fail #handmade

I’ve kept this chuck leather hard for 2 years now, somehow. It’s a tool used to trim on that helps to hold the pot in place whilst keeping its rim perfectly round. After each use its soaked in water, wrapped up in plastic and stored away in an airtight box. It helps the most for repetition trimming, as the chuck gets fastened on the wheel and then the pots quickly go on, get trimmed, and come off. Its tapering shape also means the whole variety of pots can slot over it, but this one is used for mugs and cups and vases, mainly. They aren’t something you see too often, at least on Instagram these days, but just like my throwing gauge and mirror, my chucks, and there’s a whole box of different shapes, are such incredibly useful tools. Do you use them? #potterytutorial #trimming #handmade #clay #WIP #crafts #ceramic

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Accidentally stepping on the wheel’s pedal seems to be a yearly occurrence, although miraculously this bowl survived unscathed, it just needed a tiny bit of correcting on the foot where it was bashed from being slung against the tray. Here’s another bowl, this time made with a coarse red stoneware body that, as you can see, I didn’t quite wedge properly, although the only remnant of pink lies in the foot and will eventually be hidden by glaze. I start by refining the inside, scraping the walls, straightening the rim section and making the interior a lovely smooth curve. Then I tackle the outside, with steel tools mainly, as I’m still a little worried about using tungsten carbide blades with this gritty body, but I’m sure they’ll survive. Most of the form is left relatively rough, as I don’t burnish it, but I do smooth the very bottom of the pot, the base, the part that will make contact with the table, as ultimately, I’d rather it didn’t scratch wood if dragged across a tabletop. My maker’s mark goes in, supported from either side so it doesn’t deform the foot, and that’s the vessel finished, for now. I’ll sling some plastic sheeting over it and let it dry slowly for a few days before letting it turn fully bone dry, whereupon it can be biscuit fired to 1000ºC. #fail #blooper #blooperreel #pottery #ceramics #clay

It has been a while since I’ve posted one of these. Here’s the before and after of my latest reduction firing, accompanied by the tingling sound that often emanates from the kiln when it’s opened. There’s a vast collection of shapes and forms inside, mugs, teapots, vases, lidded jars and lots of different types of bowls. All fired to 1290ºC in a reduced atmosphere over an eight-and-a-half-hour period. Once that temperature has been hit, and cone ten is flat, the kiln is crash cooled back down to 1000ºC, as this helps to retain colour and sheen, and then the entire chamber is clammed up, spy-holes stuffed and dampers slid closed. I often place a whole range of refires at the bottom, towards the front, as even with cone ten flat here, there’s still a number of cool spots that results in matte glazes, hence why I put refires here, together with vessels coated in yellow ochre iron oxide, these turn moody and metallic and I never quite know what I’m going to get, which is what makes those pots so exciting. #beforeandafter #asmr #satisfying #pottery #ceramics

Recently reduction fired lidded jars, medium and miniature, all made with lids that are almost flat, well, they are flat now, but they weren’t always. I throw the lids, trim them to fit the bodies and then I turn a slight hollow in their tops, this way the glaze can pool into this concave surface thickly, which causes the feldspathic crackle glaze to create almost petal-like forms, they’re often also described as being like snowflakes, layers of ice or even the scales of fish. #glaze #celadon #reductionfired #pottery #ceramics #studiopottery

I forgot how messy this stuff is… Coarse red stoneware, the same clay I used to mix a lot of during my apprenticeship with Lisa Hammond, for her pots. It’s a rough, toothy clay, and throwing it isn’t the most pleasant experience, it feels as if the grog is sharper than other bodies I’ve used, but once the walls have been saturated somewhat, and drawn up to be relatively thin, it throws like normal. It should, with any luck, fire to a dark crimson tone and this bowl is made from only this red stoneware, whereas the pots you’ll see later in this video, at the end, have been mixed down with a smoother body, making them much easier to throw, that’s the subject of my upcoming YouTube video in fact. You might have noticed more clays popping up in my feed this year. It’s something I’ve wanted to do now for a while, expand the range of clays I use, whilst sticking with the same handful of glazes, this way it’s the stoneware that changes the colours of my glazes, not the glazes themselves. All of which should lead to a more varied body of work. #stoneware #clay #pottery #ceramics #wheelthrownpottery #studiopottery

Unpacking experiments from the kiln might be the best part of being a potter, and that’s what this week’s YouTube video is all about. A month or two ago, Alex Pole, a blacksmith, very kindly sent me two packets, one containing hammer scale produced from working with steel, and inside the other was a handful of bronze filings. This video explores the entire process of creating two test bowls with these new additions, from mixing the by-products into my clay, followed by the wedging, throwing, trimming, glazing and finally the reduction firing, (or two, in this case). As always, you can find a link to the fully narrated video via the link in my profile’s biography. If you’ve been following along here on Instagram for a while, you’ll know that I’ve been mixing various metals into my stoneware clay or brushing it over the surface of already fired pots, for some time now, with mixed results. These experiments are some of the most intriguing parts of being a ceramicist and these two bowls ended up being real surprises, especially after their second firing to 1290ºC. Pots like this will make seldom appearances within my body of work, exclamation points to make the other neutral tones stand out and I can’t wait to explore more ideas, as mentioned in this video, so keep an eye out for that and make sure you’re subscribed to my channel if you’d like to see more. And thanks again, both to you for taking your time to watch, and to Alex, for sending these to me. Let me know what you think! #glaze #metallic #pottery #satisfying #howitsmade #asmr

The great thing this birds-eye view does, is it allows you to see my hand positioning very clearly, and how more often than not, my hands are braced together as I work to add stability to my movements, giving me greater control. Turning the bottom of stoneware bowl thrown with enough clay in the base to trim a tall, elegant foot from. Recently, I’ve been making bowls with a bit of excess weight in the walls, this way, they can be thrown with an interior form that curves from top to bottom and the outside can be trimmed to have a more angular shape, thus maintaining the functionality that is a smooth curve whilst keeping to my angular style. #pottery #handmade #wheelthrownpottery #satisfying #craft #tableware #birdseyeview

Plates are always some of my favourite pots to pack, especially these simple, small side-plates. The paper bubble wrap folded out on itself a few times is enough padding to go between them, then the whole lot are tightly wrapped in a long strip of corrugated cardboard, which means there’s almost like a second, small box around them, before they’re placed into the larger container surrounded by biodegradable packaging chips — Ciro’s favourite things to run off with — he definitely makes packaging days more hectic. I use an ink stamp, sometimes, just to mark the packaging but honestly, there’s nothing else special about it. I could wrap with twine and sprigs of flowers but as I do all the packaging myself, I try to keep things streamlined and most of what’s sent just gets recycled too, so I keep it simple. Breakages are rare, I’ve had some 6-7 pots smash in 2500 parcels sent, with a recent, very irritating one that only broke as customs sliced open the large wrapped pot and pulled it away from the centre of the packed box, meaning exposed ceramic was close to the edge of the parcel, which is never where you want it. I’m due to make a new ‘how-to’ postage and packing video for my YouTube channel as my materials have changed a lot since my last video, yet the technique, for the most part, has remained the same. If you’d like to watch this you can find it easily enough by searching for ‘how to pack pottery safely’ on YouTube. #pottery #plates #tableware #oddlysatisfying #wrapping #asmr

I’ve always wanted to try this, and no, this isn’t an advert for the butter. Not everything I make works and spouts can be notoriously tricky things to get right and this is one way to deal with the problem, albeit definitely not a permanent solution. In a way, this short video is a teaser for my longer YouTube film that’s coming out this Sunday that’s all about making spouts, how to do it, good methods of practice, how to fix common errors and how to slather butter on pots, not that this really needs a tutorial… Narrated for added flavour, would you folks like hearing my voice more on this platform, or do you prefer that I save if for my longer format films on YouTube? #butter #satisfying #pottery #functionalpottery #fail #asmr

Whilst I might enjoy making teapots, I definitely can’t say the same about glazing them. The pierced holes in the body and lid, the gallery and lid itself, the base, the spout, the handle, all of these need to be carefully fettled over and tidied and they take an age to prepare for the kiln. I use a bent bag tie to scrape the glaze off of the insides of the holes in the body, as even when dabbed over with water these tend to clog up when dipped in glaze. As for the lid, I use a very sharp potter’s needle to slowly bore a tunnel through the excess glaze, slowly, as if I just push it straight through the exit wound is usually far messier than need be, as lots of extra glaze is flaked off as the metal pokes through. Whereas slow, gradual rotations, create a much neater hole on both sides. The body is then scraped over, excess drips flattened and made flush with the body and finally the base is sponged over and the rim is scoured clean with the pot spinning on the wheel. It’s a long, repetitive process, and I’ve just finished getting through about 20 teapots or so, but that does mean I am one step closer to firing them! #teapot #WIP #glaze #pottery #asmr #satisfying #craft

The key to glazing my pots is consistency. I want as even a layer of glaze as possible coating the inside and out, although the exterior really is where you’ll notice any irregularities in the surface. To make sure the layer of glaze is even, I very quickly dunk the outside of the vessel with a balled fist, pushing it inside the bucket, and hopefully not causing too much glaze to displace and spill over, (this happens). The next day, after the saturated stoneware clay has dried out, it’s time to do the outside. In many cases, you’d do this entire procedure the other way around, first coating the inside and then doing the outside, but in this case, if the interior was already glazed, the force needed to push the vase beneath the glaze is so great, that I could very easily damage the glazed interior, hence why I do it the other way around. All the pot needs now is a bit of tidying up, the lip and foot especially, then it’ll be loaded in my Rohde KG-340 gas kiln and reduction fired to cone ten, (1290ºC), which should happen sometime in the coming weeks. #pottery #glaze #oddlysatisfying #vase #handmade #asmr

This weekend’s YouTube film details the creation, and testing, of these simple pouring bowls, from start to finish, fresh clay to glassy reduction fired objects. I had four different shapes in mind and surprisingly, the one I thought might pour terribly ended up performing the best. Spouts and pouring lips are tricky things and I hadn’t previously thought so much about how the angle of the wall they are pulled on, effects how they pour, so this was a huge learning curve for me, and funnily enough, most of that was gained through watching the footage back carefully and seeing how the liquid flows. As always, there’s a link to fully narrated film in my profile’s biography. Happy Sunday and thanks for taking the time to watch. #maker #bowl #tableware #satisfying #pottery #ceramics #craft

Before and after, with one of my classics, a simple mug thrown from approximately 300 grams of stoneware clay that’s then coated in a thick layer of this red feldspathic crackle glaze before being fired in a reduction atmosphere to 1290ºC. The red glaze at this point is coloured simply by one percent red iron oxide, it isn’t a lot, but it’s enough to create this green tone once put through the kiln. Without any added oxide it remains a grey-white, the more that’s the added the deeper the green gets. At about ten percent it’s a deep dark brown, and beyond that it’s a fluid black that practically runs off the vessels. Before the glazing process can commence, I first coat the bottom of each mug, and well all my pots, in a layer of wax emulsion. Not bees wax or paraffin wax, but the stuff that comes already molten. I mix mine down with a splash of boiling water as this helps it brush on smoothly and, for safety reasons, I feel obliged to say that you should NEVER add water to molten bees or paraffin wax as doing so creates a rather terrifying fireball. The wax presents glaze from adhering to the base of the pot and during the firing it simply burns away, yet despite this protective layer, there’s always a few specks of glaze that settle on the wax, so I need to sponge the bottom clean, as well as tidy over the tong marks, before placing them inside my gas kiln to be fired. #beforeandafter #glazing #handmade #celadon #pottery #ceramics

This week’s YouTube video shows the first steps of a new clay and glaze test with metal, bronze, inclusions. It’s a follow-up from my last round of experiments where I discuss a potential idea that produces a more subtle result. If you’d like to find out more, and watch some mixing of clays, throwing and trimming, you can find the link to the full video via the Linktree in my profile’s biography. In my previous round of tests, the bronze filings ended up dominating the pale green crackle glaze, making it appear somewhat ill-ridden, specked in blots of blood red. The idea is to use this new coarse red stoneware clay, (PF 690), with a crimson clay and with the metal wedged into the body. The copper red flashes produced by the bronze are practically the same colour as the glaze, so they should appear scattered quietly across the surface and with the addition of the red clay, that fires to crimson-brown, they should make for some rather new and interesting vessels. Yet, it’ll be a while until these pots are fired, as I’ve just concluded a reduction firing cycle, so consider this a little tease, a film to get the ball rolling. Thanks for watching! #clay #glaze #stoneware #potteryvideos #ceramics #oddlysatisfying

Studio manager appreciation post. Long live long bodied Ciro. #miniaturedachshund #dachshund #dogsoftiktok #potterydog