Pottery Clay

There are three main types of pottery clay: Earthenware, Stoneware, and Porcelain.

Clay for all types of ceramics are blended from various types of clay and minerals that impart different firing and handling characteristics.

Earthenware: Earthenware clay is "low-fire" so you will fire around Cone 05 depending on the formula. These clay bodies include classic terra-cotta and low-fire talc and no-talc white clays often used in schools. Earthenware clay can not technically be vitreous (water-tight) on its own so generally, these clays are used for decorative items and sculpture.

Stoneware: Stoneware clay is mostly "mid-fire" so you will fire at cone 5 or cone 6. We also offer a selection of "high-fire" cone 10 stoneware bodies as well. Stoneware is your choice to make functional ware in electric, gas or wood kilns. Any properly fired stoneware clay will be vitreous enough to hold water even without a glaze. Stoneware is clay in the majority of good-quality, studio pottery. We offer a range of light and dark stoneware clay bodies to suit your taste to a t! Choose "white stoneware" for clay nearly as white as porcelain but with the handling characteristics of a friendly stoneware.

Porcelain: Porcelain pottery clay offers the whitest color of the mid-fire and high-fire clays. Fine china and bone china are made with porcelain clay with a lot of kaolin. Our porcelain clay bodies are blended with other clays to give you the best handling characteristics while still maintaining it's a natural beauty. Compared to stoneware, porcelain is considered "short" meaning it is less tolerant to being worked on the wheel. Throw quickly and with as little water as possible to overcome this. If you can throw very thin walls you can expect to find some translucency! Traditionally porcelain has been for cone 10 only but we offer excellent cone 6 porcelain as well so that you can use it in your electric kiln!

You will notice that we offer many of our clay bodies with or without grog. Grog is ground-up of pre-fired clay or sand. The addition of grog in clay gives the claymore "tooth." The tooth will make it much easier to throw on the wheel. Grog also limits the shrinkage of clay from wet to bone dry so when you join handles or are hand-building you will have better success. Grog also gives the clay greater resistance to thermal shock if you raku or pit fire. Our specialized Sculptural, Architectural, and raku clays have a lot of grog but our regular clay bodies have just enough to give you that tooth without it being overly gritty on your hands.