The key to ceramics 101

Those little keys up there are bronze toggles I’ve been working on. They are prototypes and that I am not entirely sure will make it beyond this stage. They are little horrors to make and I'm not really sure I like them. But I really wanted something to go with the oval filigree pattern that could work as a clasp. They are up there to lure you into this blog post.

But the ceramics part of this is an answer to a comment by Kelley. I’m so happy she asked about the ceramic process. You know, I often talk like everyone knows exactly what I’m talking about. A lot of times this is not the case, as my children like to point out, sometimes rudely. They also like to point out that to assume makes an …. oh well lets not go there on this nice clean blog.

So here’s what I do from start to finish to make a bead and a few definitions thrown in for good measure.

bisque kiln

The bead gets made, dried and cleaned. Then it and all its brothers and sisters go through the first firing, the bisque. The bisque is the firing that goes before glazing. It makes the bead hard enough to glaze without falling apart but porous enough for the glaze to sink in and bond to the surface. This is a pretty low temperature firing in terms of ceramics, cone 04 (around 1900 F). I’m not going to go into the whole Orton cone stuff, because, yawn, because heat work and cone bending is far too boring even for me. The pieces can touch at this point because nothing melts in this firing.

glazing bisque beads and pendants

Once out of the kiln, I brush glaze on the bead. Fresh out of my glaze jars, it’s a thick liquid. Fired to maturity, it’s a glass surface bonded to the bead. Lot’s of chemistry here, also far too boring to go into. But for those of us who have a bit of mad scientist lurking in our psyche, it’s pretty amazing stuff.

Then it’s off to the glaze firing. I fire to cone 6 (around 2300 F). This one takes about 10 hours and another 8 hours to cool before I can unload the kiln. All of the pendants and beads are put on metal rods that won’t melt at that temperature. They get loaded so that nothing is touching, because if the beads touch they will become melted together in interesting but totally unusable ways.

cabachons and buttons on bottom shelf


pendants on middle shelf

beads on top shelf

18 hours later, shiny sparkly finished beads

So there you have it, ceramic beads in a nutshell.

One other little note. I do use metal clay as well and refer to that as a bronze/copper firing. Metal clay in fact has nothing to do with ceramics other than it’s plastic like clay in its moist state. And firing really isn’t what happens in a ceramic sense. In the kiln metal clay sinters and all of the stuff that held it together burns away and the microscopic particles of metal melt together. More geeky science here.

And if you made it this far in this post you need to head to your nearest ceramics studio and get your hands muddy. Oh and do join me on the Beads Of Clay blog tomorrow for a little behind the scenes as I get ready for my first ever bead show.

Thanks everyone for your lovely sweet comments on the bird and branch pendant. I love that feedback and it always inspires me to new things.