Pittenweem Pottery

The Pottery Process

After pots have been thrown, they are taken off the wheel and placed on a piece of wood to dry a little. At this this stage, the pots are referred to as ‘Green’ - that is, they still have moisture in them. Once they are leather hard, they can be fettled and they are also ready for handles to be applied.

Decoration by indentation, additive or sgraffito can also be applied while at the supple stage. Still at the ‘green’ stage, the pots can be decorated with slip. Sgraffito can be carried out also after a slip has been added, say a white slip to a terracotta pot.

Still at the ‘green’ stage, the pots can be decorated with slip. If they are bone dry, a technique called terra sigillata can be used to get that authentic Greco/Romano finish, a gloss or sheen. This lengthens out the whole process of making pottery but is very rewarding. All pottery items are then left to dry until safe to place in the kiln, for what we call a biscuit firing. We all know that the boiling temperature of water is 100 DegC. So, any water left in the pot would boil and make the pot explode. Hence we let the pots dry and after placing them in the kiln, we slowly raise the temperature of the kiln over several hours.

For more information on the Leach family of potters, go to Simon Leach & John Leach sites. They have an interesting range of functional stoneware. These are still going and you'll get a real sense of history.

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After the biscuit firing, pots need to cool down before they can be glazed. Biscuit pots can also have decor added to them either Under-glaze decor or Over-glaze decoration. The glaze makes the pottery suitable for holding water and for being sanitised after use. However, some glazes contain lead and these cannot be used for dinner/kitchen ware. At Pittenweem Pottery, we do not use lead based glazes.

Below is an example of a pan cooling plate. It had 2 holes so you could hang it and if you placed a hot pot on the picture side, this enabled the pot to cool down without marking the table top surface. Turning this over on the undecorated side, it can be used to bake scones - very nice too.

My interest in Roman pottery techniques came from my stay with the Fishley Holland Pottery. We were asked to copy Roman artefacts and we used to reproduce it prolifically. I found this interesting and plan to bring that type of thing back to life here.

Below is the Pittenweem Pottery & Art Gallery with the pottery studio on the end. At the Pittenweem Arts Festival, we provided refreshments for visitors to the gallery and water for the doggy visitors too. Maggie takes pride in her birthplace and so keenly helps visitors find all the attractions.