Experimenting with coloured clays for unglazed ceramics

For many of the ceramic pieces I create I like to keep them unglazed so the purity of the clay can shine through within the design. Part of this involves playing with texture and also introducing different types of materials in my pottery such as textured black clay, crank and pizza oven clay which allows for a grain like finish to emerge once fired.

But colour is also extremely important to me. As someone who has always worked in a visually creative field I know how colour can really set the scene and invoke certain feelings for people viewing a piece of art or design.

Whilst I personally love the minimal aesthetic of ceramics in their natural colours like stone, black and terracotta I’m very keen to start working on more matt, unglazed pieces which introduce different colours to the core palette I enjoy working with.

Strong blues along with ochre and mustard shades of yellow have always particularly appealed to me. I’m someone who likes to see colours which occur naturally in nature within my own home décor and steer away from more gaudy neon’s or artificially bright colourways.

With this in mind the blue and yellow pigment I’ve used to colour the stoneware in the test pieces above feels very vibrant but still natural at a 25% ratio. The 5% and 10% mixes could work very well for certain pieces but I’m more drawn towards creating some new items for my Architect Range in the deeper teal and mustard colours. The next step is to mix up some bigger batches using these pigments so keep an eye out as I’ll be sharing the results soon.

If you’ve ever thought about doing a pottery class in Sheffield either as a one of workshop or a longer set of classes then why not get in touch with me? 

As well as the pottery workshops I have available to book now I’m always interested to hear from beginners who might like a bit of one to one tuition in pottery or groups looking to maybe do something a little different.

My pottery studio is located just over a mile from Sheffield City Centre and being situated just off Abbeydale Road is easy to get to by public transport.