Published on
Antoinette Badenhorst interviews internationally respected ceramic artist Michael Schwegmann in a thoughtful discussion about functional pottery, craftsmanship, kiln firing, teaching, and artistic growth. Known for his expressive surfaces, wood firing expertise, and dedication to studio pottery, Michael shares insights into creative discipline, clay preparation, form development, and building a lifelong career in ceramics. This inspiring interview explores the philosophy, techniques, and passion behind professional pottery and ceramic education.
​Michael Schwegmann is an award winning porcelain artist who came from a heritage of craftsmen. 
Through his porcelain clay processes he tells stories about tradesman, their tools and machinery. Empty paint cans become canvasses through which he stages the finished job and the worker. He opens up conversations with his patriotic objects about the US flag and military equipment.​
Published on
Bradley Gordon is a wildlife painter from Oxford Mississippi. He exhibited his colorful paintings in the Gumtree Museum of Art in Tupelo, Mississippi - the birthplace of Elvis Presley. His art is inspired by Japanese Pop Art and is enriched by his upbringing in the Mississippi Delta. Gordon studied at the University of Mississippi in Oxford and taught English in Taiwan and Japan.
Published on
Right from his early days (60+ years ago), Ron was looking for a canvas on which he could apply a pottery glaze. Creating pottery with thicker or thinner rims would dictate which glaze would go where. 
In his earliest days, information of raw materials was hard to come by, so potters often had to guess their way through recipes. Then calculating the percentages of different ingredients to assure that there is not too much or too little of either a flux (an oxide that lowers the melting temperature of refractory oxides), or a stabilizer (alumina) or a glass former (silica or borax) in a pottery glaze, never turned out the same two times in a row. 
Ron wanted to visualize the inside of a ceramic glaze, so when he got his first computer, a new world opened for him. This experience of getting to know glaze making and to break the uncertainty and thumb sucking to obtain good and stable glazes became reality when Tony Hansen from Digital fire fame created the first Insight program. 
​
It was with this program that Ron Roy became the glaze doctor, helping potters around the globe to fix glazing problems and to obtain sturdy clay and glazes. 
Being a person that believe you have to give to receive, his contributions to Clayart, is (at age 86) to this day still unmeasurable.

The pottery book Mastering Cone 6 glazes, with co-author John Hesselberth is back on the market after it was first published in 2002. This book took the potters market by storm and almost every potter that worked at ^6 developed glazes from there; learning about the importance of stable and food safe glazes. ( scroll down for video)
Now he brings us Glazing with Ron Roy. After years of personal exploration of glazes, helping other potters to improve and fix faulty glazes, he offers an online class which will allow you to be directly in conversation with him about remedying glazes. Ron will show you step by step  examples of how to use the free Insight program, a frontrunner of the Insight-live program. He will also share with you the follow-up Ron Roy Glaze book in PDF format. ​
Picture

Mastering Cone 6 glazes By John Hesselberth and Ron Roy

This book offers something different from what potters find in other pottery glaze books. John and Ron discuss what stable and durable ceramic glazes mean. 
They give basic information about buying, storing, weighing, and mixing pottery glazes. 
They teach you how to test for stability, clay, and glaze fit on clayware, resistance to flaws like too soft glazes, causing scratch marks on dinnerware. How to resist glazes on kitchenware to become damaged by acids and alkalis, and how to prevent pottery breaking apart due to terminal shock.
They teach potters how to fit a glaze and prevent shivering ( which will result in glass flakes on pottery), dunting and crazing of pottery.
The book concludes with stoneware, porcelain, and specialty glazes and how to develop your own glazes. ​

​Online Glazing with Ron Roy on Insight

Picture
Picture

Porcelain plates by Ron Roy

Glaze book in PDF format by 
Ron Ro content list
​​Expansion coefficients
Limit formulas
Typical Analysis - Glaze materials
Typical Analysis - Feldspars & Spodumenes
Analysis for selected Frits
Typical analysis - clays
The oxides
Glaze defects
Firing Up
Cooling Down
Glaze Test Preparation
Testing for Fit (expansion / contraction)
Testing clay to see if it will leak
Fixing clay and glaze problems
Molecular Weights
Hazards and All Glazes Leach - safety
Recommended Texts and web sites
Published on
This video of Antoinette was recorded during her hands-on workshop at the Pottery Studio in Bryanston in South Africa. She shows how to throw a big porcelain bowl on the pottery wheel, add more clay to it, cut and carve it and alter it to get translucency. ​Carving can be done from wet to bisque. Make sure the tools are right for the clay stage. ​​
​Antoinette's Gallery, hands-on workshops and e-courses
All our e-courses at ​TeachinArt.com online art school
See Antoinette's blog index ​​
Published on
Centering clay on the potter’s wheel is one of the first, and by far the most important activity that any potter must learn before it is possible to throw a pot.​​​
Most beginner potters are so eager to start throwing, that it take some time to realize the importance of good centering. Some potters will lose interest at this stage and strictly concentrate on hand building. Others will end up with an injury or have difficulty to recover from bad habits.
There is not just one good way to learn to center clay, but there are good ways and bad ways. An understanding of what happens on the wheel will help to find the best way.
In this video, I am explaining to you what is happening on the wheel during the centering of clay and teach you my way. Enjoy!
TeachinArt is our online school where artists and potters can learn from the quiet of their own studios and where they get an in depth understanding of Antoinette's classes. You have direct access to the instructor while you study with her to ask questions. ​
Published on
​Porcelain clay demands just as much technique and maybe more. It is not so much that the Diva wants to be difficult, but you know she is a water addict right? That means she will drink in as much water as quickly as she can and just when you think she is satisfied, she collapses on you!
Published on
Picture
Picture
Learn how to make a porcelain coil pot with Antoinette Badenhorst through professional online teaching at TeachinArt. Discover porcelain handbuilding techniques, coil construction, clay preparation, and finishing methods in this inspiring ceramics workshop. See more about the Porcelain Handbuilding online workshop. 
Published on

​Saving face.....

Picture
It took me years to learn and understand that pottery carried a history that stretched far beyond my imagination. I never realized the importance of clay for anthropological research.  If my first studio would have been an archaeological site, they will probably find shards, telling interesting stories of us few women that had so much fun in our garage studio and maybe they would find the first signs of the birth of my passion for clay. It became a lifelong love affair, one that I never would have managed, was it not for my dear husband and his patience with me. (oh he still did not eat his hat as he said he would do if I become a potter!)
I was not fortunate enough to learn about clay through generational inheritance, as the ancient people probably did. I did not even know at first that clay is earth and it was a big "aha" moment for me when I realized that clay in a kiln and rocks forming from lava had strong similarities. When I decided I have to start teaching pottery, I never thought that I started on a path in which I created footprints that may have some permanence. Having that knowledge now, puts on me an obligation to make sure that any piece I fire not just holds beauty in its core, but also an intelligence of good craftsmanship and expression value to last for millenniums to come.
My career came a long way from those very first days with clay. It became a profession that took me across the world and that gave me opportunities to show and teach my porcelain in which I ended up specializing,  to potters around the globe.  The latest highlight is showing my work with a group of internationally recognized potters in a New Members Exhibition in Beijing China. The show was canceled earlier this year due to the pandemic, so it just opened recently as a virtual show at the Guozhong Ceramic Art Museum

​A few Historical facts about pottery

I mentioned anthropologists. It is one of their specialty fields to have an interest in clay objects. Did you know that shards can tell us about ancient technology and human behavior? Since clay is preserved by fire, it carries footprints and cultural evidence that cannot easily be distinguished. 
I came across this you tube video that explains how they translate images and marks from clay into historical facts: The presenter has a lively way in which he explains the importance of pottery shards to read ancient history.
It took me years to learn and understand that pottery carried a history that stretched far beyond my imagination. I never realized the importance of clay for anthropological research.  If my first studio would have been an archaeological site, they will probably find shards, telling interesting stories of us few women that had so much fun in our garage studio and maybe they would find the first signs of the birth of my passion for clay. It became a lifelong love affair, one that I never would have managed, was it not for my dear husband and his patience with me. (oh he still did not eat his hat as he said he would do if I become a potter!)
I also found this beautiful website with information about the Ancestral Pueblo cultures found in the regions where Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado meets, known as “The Four Corner area” It is believed that the Pueblo people descended from nomadic living styles and gathered here some 12 thousand years ago. Their pottery has a significant influence on American pottery; to this day.
Picture
Picture
Published on
​Antoinette Badenhorst and David Voorhees are professional potters with a combined experience of almost 80 years in teaching potters how to work with clay. ​​
​Buying pottery wheel bat systems are expensive, but you can do it yourself (DIY) in your studio.
Mima Boskov from South Africa helped us to improve the system! Read more here.
See Antoinette's work and workshops at PorcelainByAntoinette
See list of e-courses at ​TeachinArt.com online art school
See Antoinette's blog index