A term that describes all unfired clay. This includes clay that is wet, leatherhard, and bone dry.
What is Greenware
100
A glass coating on the outside of a ceramic piece.
What is Glaze?
100
Things we use in ceramics to measure and gauge the amount of heat inside a kiln when firing.
What are pyrometric cones?
100
This term is used to describe the clay reproduction created from your mold.
What are Casts?
100
This is the first step when working with clay using any process.
What is Wedging?
200
A type of Clay Deposit that is eroded directly beneath its parent rock.
What is Primary Clay?
200
A material that with stands melting at high temperatures.
What is a refractory material?
200
This is the first firing in the ceramic process that drives off all physical and chemical water. During this firing clay becomes hard and turns into rock. After this firing the ceramic pieces can be handled without breaking and glazed.
What is a bisque firing?
200
These are used in mold making to to help the two parts of the mold to line up when casting.
What are keys
200
This is what we do when attaching two pieces of clay together.
What is slip and score?
300
A type of Clay Deposit that is eroded further from the parent rock. This contains other impurities such as metallic oxides and other biological material.
What is Secondary Clay?
300
This material is the glassmaker in a glaze.
What is Flint or Silica?
300
This is a firing range typically used for earthenware clays and is at a lower temperature.
What is Low-Fire? (cone 04)
300
These are areas where plaster would fill in and cause the object to get stuck in half of the mold. When beginning our mold we are careful when finding our parting line and claying up our piece to prevent these.
What is an Undercut?
300
We use this as lubrication between your hands and the clay when throwing on the potters wheel.
What is Water?
400
The processes of erosion through which clay is made.
What is Kaolinization?
400
A material that lowers the melting point of other materials around it. These are used in ceramics to lower the melting point of silica in a glaze.
What is a flux?
400
A firing range used for glazes on porcelain and stoneware clays and is at the highest temperature range.
What is High Fire? Cone 10
400
An exothermic reaction causes the plaster to do this when hardening.
What is heats up or gets warm?
400
Where your fingers are located when pulling the clay up into a cylinder on the potter's wheel.
What is 4 or 5 o'clock.
500
This characteristic of a clay body describes the ability to bend and manipulate the clay without cracking.
What is Plasticity?
500
The roll of Alumina (clay) in a glaze? This helps keep melting silica from running off of the surface of a ceramic piece during a firing.
What is a stabilizer?
500
This type of kiln is used when you fire to a low-fire temperature and you open the kiln to remove the pieces when the kiln is glowing hot.
What is a Raku kiln?
500
This is what plaster is made from.
What is Gypsum rock?
500
This is the type of tool used to smooth out the surface or shape a pot while throwing on the potter's wheel.