Category Archives: Technique

Today I reserved for writing a blog and finishing a few ceramic owls. Of course not “finishing” as a butcher, but just the opposite of bringing them life. Not a blog about the design process, but the physical “making”. After all, if you are a maker 🙂 .

A while ago I shared a few photos of my making process on Insta . I received some nice responses. So I thought it would be a good idea to explain the physical process in this blog using photos and text.

In short I would like to show you how I work.

Continue reading Finishing small ceramic owls →

Glaze, Technique

Arriving at glaze temperature

25 October 2019 Daniel Bende 2 Comments

A ceramist wants to arrive as an artist, a ceramic glaze wants to arrive at the right glaze temperature. Greg Daly calls this “arriving at temperature” in his glaze travels. Who dares to say that there is no poetry in ceramic glazes?

Daly provides methods to investigate at which temperature glazes melt, but no (theoretical) tools to predict this for a given glaze. However, you do need this if you want to design a glaze with a predetermined temperature. If you don’t know which corner to look in, it is also hard to get there.

Glaze temperature is a mechanism, as there are several in glaze technology. To be able to decipher this mechanism you have to look from the right angle (more about this in this blog).

For glaze temperature this is the oxide level. If we dissect a glaze into oxides (the different molecules in a glaze) it is possible to discover trends.

I am still researching how to arrive as an artist, but I have guidelines to arrive at the right melting temperature for any glaze. In this blog I explore the three main ratios:

SiO₂ -Al₂O₃
RO₂ -RO
B₂O₃

Continue reading →

Technique

Handmade Ceramics Design, from Mud to Mug

12 October 2019 Daniel Bende 2 Comments

Design is the arrangement of visual elements in space. Handmade ceramics design is no exception. Except that you get mud on your hands (and on the floor and the rest of the studio). But are there any other differences?

For my mug project I thought it would be fun to put it to the test. Do theory and practice match? In this blog I will gladly take you into my ceramics design process. In other words: from mud to mug.

Continue reading Handmade Ceramics Design, from Mud to Mug →

Personally, Technique

Hand-made ceramics pictures

29 July 2019 Daniel Bende Leave a comment

It is again (well almost) vacation, so time for (drum roll) handmade ceramics pictures. Why?

Next year a new NVK-Ceramics member guide will be released with all the affiliated ceramic artists form the Netherlands and Belgium (yeah!!). But that also means I had to go to work…

No, not to make new ceramic sculptures, but to capture my new work digitally. In this online world a significant part of making ceramics. And whoever makes his own ceramics, also takes his own photos.

I hear you thinking, “that you are taking your own pics, is really obvious“.

Okay, fair point, you don’t have to take your own photos. It’s hard enough to make ceramics. But I like to learn things by doing it myself. That is the nature of this beast. Continue reading Hand-made ceramics pictures →

Clay, Firing, Glaze, Technique

3 Ceramics Mystifications Unmasked

14 July 2019 Daniel Bende Leave a comment

Making ceramics is magical, ceramics mystifications certainly are not. Ceramics and glazes are surrounded by a cloud of thick black smoke. And I do not mean the smoke when firing raku.

Theory behind practice is often unnecessarily made very complicated. Because of ignorance, to impress? I have no idea, but it has always frustrated my quest for clear knowledge. Time for unmasking.

In this blog I grab three ceramics mystifications by the clay.. euh horns.

Continue reading 3 Ceramics Mystifications Unmasked →

Glaze, Technique

Ceramic glaze levels for analysis

6 May 2019 Daniel Bende Leave a comment

As a glaze nerd I like to make rows. That’s why I use the “viewpoints” of Tony Hanssen (digitalfire) when analyzing glazes. From him I learned four glaze levels:

Process
Recipe
Material
Oxide

In developing a glaze I have always had this theoretical framework in mind. I greatly benefit from this to achieve desired results, a finish that fits my ceramics.

In recent years more and more public data are available, also in the field of glazes. Can these new insights be incorporated into the existing framework or is it time for more perspectives?

Continue reading Ceramic glaze levels for analysis →

Inspiration, Personally, Technique

Terra Sig: Personal Ceramics Projects

8 April 2019 Daniel Bende Leave a comment

At the moment I am studying the Terra Sig technique. Making time for your personal ceramics projects is important, at least for me.

The last months I have been working hard to give an advice on a local (pottery) clay, on a survey among the readers of my newsletter and following a branding course. All worth my time and effort.

However instructive this was, sometimes I encounter a technique that I want to investigate further. Ceramics is a field where many techniques play a role. I always like to read about all kinds of methods. But to “really” get to know a technique I have to put theory into practice.

Continue reading Terra Sig: Personal Ceramics Projects →

Clay, Glaze, Opinion, Technique

Commercial glazes, pushing product

28 January 2019 Daniel Bende 2 Comments

This week a blog about a new book by Deanna Ranlett “Off the Shelf, outside the Box”.

I fasten my bike on the Bloemgracht, Amsterdam. On the corner I can score at my dealer, in an old building with a nice glass facade. I step in, my heart rate accelerates, my blood pressure rises. I can’t pull my eyes from all the mysterious powders in many colors on the shelves. Here dreams are fulfilled.

It was in the early years 90 of the last century. And no, it wasn’t a “headshop” where I went in. It was the old shop of Ve-Ka in Amsterdam. Of these powders you do not hallucinate, but you will be happy…… when it is fired in a ceramic kiln.

Continue reading Commercial glazes, pushing product →

Glaze, Inspiration, Technique

Feeling blue, blue glaze magic

14 January 2019 Daniel Bende Leave a comment

2019 has just started and “I am feeling Blue“. No I don’t have the blues, I really feel blue……… that is to say glaze blue.

The first firing of this year I tried some new glazes. Glazes I developed and tried on test tiles. But you will only get to know a glaze for real when you use it. And fortunately, also “in the real“, this glaze suits me very well.

Each glaze has its own origin. This blue glaze started as a muddy kind of brown…

Continue reading Feeling blue, blue glaze magic →

Clay, Technique

Clay recycling, fooling around with clay

28 December 2018 Daniel Bende Leave a comment

As a ceramic maker, “the recycling of clay is part of my work process“. To describe it a bit less professional: “fooling around with clay“, is not only throwing behind the wheel. There are also less ambitious activities such as “flinging with mud“…

Clay recycling means in practice, that everything that goes wrong on the potter’s wheel, I “fling in the clay bin”. And when the clay bin is overflowing I need to get started…

Continue reading Clay recycling, fooling around with clay →

Clay, Inspiration

Glück auf: Westerwald stoneware clay

8 September 2016 Daniel Bende Leave a comment

Stoneware clay is is the material which I use to form my ceramic sculptures on the wheel. And I’m not the only one who has daily contact with this natural product. An average human uses in his lifetime according to the BKRI about 18 tons (18,000 kg) of clay. It is difficult to make an accurate estimate, but that it is much, I am more than willing to believe.

Clay is the main component of plates, bowls and tiles (“fine ceramics”), for bricks, roof tiles and drainpipes (“coarse ceramics”) and as auxiliary raw material in among others soaps, toothpaste and cosmetics.

In addition, clay in modern times is used in technical ceramics such as implants (bio-ceramics), insulators and superconductors (electro-ceramics) and in various ceramic composite materials (such as solar cells and heat shields on the space shuttle).

So a life without clay is not only unthinkable for me. Where does all this clay come from? For this blog, I went on a journey to the source.

Continue reading Glück auf: Westerwald stoneware clay →

Firing, Glaze, Technique

Seger cones, old tech in the “digital age”

19 July 2012 Daniel Bende Leave a comment

Glazing bisqueware (clay object after the first firing) is very different from painting an object. You can’t see which texture and color (effects) you are applying during glazing. Applying different glazes, slips or oxide washes, the ceramicist must compose the colors in his or her mind.

In doing so, he/she must take into account that overlaps of glazes do not always lead to a mixed color, the thickness of the glaze effects color and/or texture and the application method (spraying, pouring over, brushing, etc.) may or may not lead to desired effects. Just to name a few variables. So the disappointment is great when the thought experiment does not match the final result.

I haven’t even mentioned one of the most important “wildcards”: the glaze firing. To tame this beast, many digital tools have been developed over the past 20 years. The most important of course is the (computerized) kiln control. however, this does not make the Seger cones superfluous.