DIY Network

Web Extras: Gallery and Lid Combinations, Glazing Techniques Bill Van Gilder shares tips and techniques for finishing your canisters. From "Throwing Clay" episode DTHC-111

There are several gallery and lid combinations you can make for this canister set. Here are some of Bill's favorite variations.

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I use four basic lid fitting arrangements. They have proven to be very interchangeable as I explore new use and form ideas. Try each of them on a teapot, sugar jar, canister, casserole or any other lidded form you choose to make.

Drop-in lid

This lidding is made with a split rim, or rolled rim, gallery at the top of the jar. The lid and knob are thrown from the top of a large hump of clay in one piece. When the lid is leather hard, it is inverted onto the wheel head and trimmed smooth.

Ginger jar lid

The rim of the jar is made with a slight upturned edge, enough to catch and hold the lid in place. The lid is thrown as a shallow bowl and trimmed when it is leather hard.

Humped lid

The rim of the jar is split or rolled inward to create a gallery, or ledge, onto which the lid rim will rest. The lid is thrown as a very shallow bowl. When the lid is leather hard, it's inverted onto the wheel head and trimmed round and smooth, and a soft piece of clay is attached and thrown into a knob shape.

Gallery lid

The jar is thrown with a straight and simple rim. The lid is thrown inverted on the wheel head like a shallow, thick-rimmed bowl. The lid rim is then split, forming an upward angled ledge that, when complete, catches the inside of the jar rim securely. When the lid is leather hard it is inverted onto the wheel head, trimmed and knobbed.

Glazing Techniques

Glazing techniques can make all the difference in a finished piece.

As you make your pottery forms on the wheel, or as you hand-build them, keep your color palette and application techniques in mind. Try to see the finished piece in your mind's eye as you work at making the form through the finishing step, glazing. Illustrated here are several glazing techniques on a piece of discarded bisqueware for practice.

Here are some helpful hints and ideas:

• Make sure your glaze batch is sieved smooth and stirred up completely. A lumpy glaze application or a thin, watery and unevenly stirred glaze batch is troublesome during the application step. An uneven coating of glaze will be very noticeable on a finished piece!

• Test your glazes for thickness before committing them to your finished piece. Examples of what you should test for: Is the glaze-fired surface better if the wet glaze is applied thickly, thinly or medium-thickly? Do two glazes overlap each other to give a pleasing color?

• It's usual that a second glaze coat (one glaze on top of another) be done quickly and thinly. A second glaze, if applied over a first glaze excessively thickly, will crack and flake off your pot.
  

  Figure A

• Use a half-filled teaspoon of glaze to drop a tapered line of one glaze over another. Touch the glaze-filled spoon edge against the pot and quickly tip it inward, dropping the glaze to flow downward toward the foot (figure A).

• Fill a rubber ball-syringe with glaze and slowly drop lines of glaze from the rim to the foot of your pot. Be sure to clean away excess glaze at the base of the form where the dropped glaze line runs over and off the foot. This technique works extremely well on sloping or curved surfaces like round bottle forms or inside a bowl's gentle curve.
  

  	Figure B
  	Figure C

• For a larger version of the teaspoon drop technique, use a kitchen ladle to apply one glaze over another (the same technique as above, but on a bigger scale). This ladle-pouring technique works especially well inside large, shallow bowl forms.

  Rest the foot of the bowl on your fingertips and position it nearly vertical as you tip the ladle to pour and drop the second glaze downward over the first glaze coat (figure B). Hold the bowl in place until all the glaze drips have solidified. This prevents unwanted glaze drips and runs on the underneath side of your bowl form.

• Use a fine-tipped brush to apply a wax-resist decoration--lines or patterns--directly onto a bisque-fired form. Then dip the pot into a single glaze or multiple glazes (figure C). This technique exposes the colored clay body as decoration.

RESOURCES :

Kilns
L & L Kilns
Website: www.hotkilns.com

Clay
Highwater Clays
Website: www.highwaterclays.com

Extruders
American Art Clay Co. Inc. (AMACO)
Website: www.amaco.com