Working With Porcelain: Why It Isn’t Difficult—Just Different
Porcelain is often regarded as a challenging clay body to work with.  Potters who attempted it often like the medium, however some give up not understanding how to handle the medium. They perceive it as fragile, finicky, and tedious. However, my challenging personality and years of experience have led me to a different perspective. Today, I advocate for working with porcelain clay. While it is demanding,  the rewards and benefits make it all worthwhile. ​
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My Early Journey With Porcelain Clay
My first experiences working with porcelain, was unsuccessful. To make it worse, more experienced potters and instructors  intimidated me. In my early days of pottery I created simple forms, fired to cone 8.  
Much of my early porcelain work ended up in pit firings. I created incredibly thin porcelain pieces that were fired in pits. These works eventually helped me secure permanent residency for my family and me in the United States.  
Those early works evolved into sculptural pit-fired pieces that carried my emotions during a time that I was still griefing the loss of leaving my home country,  South Africa.
​Eventually, the heaviness lifted. I began seeing light, movement, and ballerinas in sheer dresses in my mind’s eye. Southern Ice porcelain became my medium of joy. Translucency, color, and light became symbols of the future.

​Porcelain isn’t difficult. It’s different.
Unlike stoneware or earthenware, porcelain is worked as clay but becomes something closer to glass when fired.
Understanding that single truth changes everything about how you handle, design, and fire it.

Why Porcelain Cracks: Understanding the Real Causes 
Cracking in porcelain isn’t random—it’s usually caused by handling, design, firing, or glazing mistakes, to name a few.  Over the years, I’ve seen every kind of crack imaginable, both in my own studio and in work sent to me by students from around the world through TeachinArt.com.
Let’s break them down.

​Why Porcelain Handles Crack (And How to Fix It)
Many potters struggle with porcelain handles. The real culprit in most cases is particle orientation.
Clay shrinks in unison only when its particles are aligned and compacted evenly. A handle, unconditionally of the way it is formed,  has its own direction of particles, and when you attach it to a mug, it’s like two traffic flows meeting head-on.
You need an off-ramp.
How to Attach Porcelain Handles Successfully

• Score and wet thoroughly. (remember slip particles are diluted and in disarray!)
• Attach when both parts are equally moist
• Compress and blend the joint well
• Think about handles as foreign objects that must become unified with the form

If cracks still appear, look at possible mistakes in your design and firing schedule, not just the joint.

Preventing Design Cracks in Porcelain Work 
Porcelain must be formed evenly. Uneven thickness leads to slumping, tearing, and cracking.
At high temperatures, porcelain becomes  pyro plastic — it softens like glass. 

Design Tips for Porcelain

• Keep walls consistent in thickness
• Avoid heavy areas attached to thin ones. 
• Heavy clay will be drawn towards the kiln shelf and will drag thinner clay along with it. 

Firing Cracks and Dunting in Porcelain
Dunting happens when the kiln heats or cools too fast. It can occur in bisque or glaze firing.
If a piece comes out of the kiln split cleanly in two, or cracks days later with sharp, glassy edges—the cooling cycle is usually to blame.  
Dunts in bisque ware is not   common in porcelain clay, but glaze cracking happens often.  
How to Prevent Firing Cracks

• Slow down your firing and especially the cooling schedule
• Pay special attention to cooling around quartz inversion
• Don’t rush porcelain through temperature changes

Antoinette Badenhorst, a renowned potter, presents online classes and hands-on workshops worldwide. In 2014, she and her husband, Koos, founded TeachingArt Online School of Art. Together with other experienced and renown teachers, they provide comprehensive online courses for potters and artists globally. These comprehensive learning experiences are meticulously designed to enhance skills, boost confidence, and foster a deeper understanding of pottery, rather than offering mere demonstrations. 

If you enjoyed and gained something from this blog post, please share it with your friends. Unfortunately, I won’t be traveling abroad this year because I need to catch up on my studio work and am also writing a book. 
Details of my next ​porcelain workshop is available  on the Workshop page

In her porcelain workshops at TeachinArt, Antoinette Badenhorst demonstrates how excessive water during wheel throwing can quickly cause porcelain clay - which she calls the “Diva of Clay” - to weaken and collapse.
Porcelain requires careful moisture control because of its fine particle structure and delicate balance between strength and softness. During wheel throwing, too much water can oversaturate the clay body, reducing stability and making walls soft, uneven, or unable to support their own weight.
Antoinette explains how beginners often rely on excess water while centering and pulling clay, not realizing that porcelain absorbs moisture rapidly. As the clay becomes overly saturated, forms begin to slump, lose definition, or completely collapse on the wheel.
In her demonstrations, students learn:

• How to control water usage while throwing porcelain
• Proper hand pressure and wheel speed
• Techniques for maintaining wall strength
• How to recognize signs of oversaturation
• Methods for preserving clean forms and elegant lines

By understanding the sensitive nature of translucent porcelain, ceramic artists can develop stronger wheel-throwing skills and greater confidence when working with this demanding but rewarding clay body.
Through detailed online instruction, Antoinette helps potters understand not only how porcelain behaves, but why proper technique is essential for successful wheel-thrown ceramics.