Egypt Hills Pottery Studio

 

All pieces are handmade by me in my home studio located in the Hamlet of Egypt within the Town of Perinton, a suburb of Rochester New York. I use different types of stoneware clay and handcraft each piece. All glazes are commercially manufactured and food safe unless otherwise noted. All of my pots are handcrafted individually by from raw industry produced clays. For mugs or bowls they are hand thrown on the pottery wheel, items like platters or wall art are made from the same clay rolled out into a slab then cut and shaped.

After the form has been established and the pot has been dried to leather hard the items are loaded into an electric kiln and fired to 1976 degrees Fahrenheit. This firing takes about 12 to 18 hours to complete.

Once the kiln has cooled the pots are unloaded, inspected and wet sanded. Commercially produced glazes are applied by dipping or brushes, mostly brushing, lots & lots of brushing. Each individual glaze takes a minimum of 3 coats and some combinations that are rich with colors and drippy could be 10 to 15 layers of brushed on glaze.

Once the glaze is dry the pots are loaded back into the electric kiln and fired to 2167 degrees Fahrenheit. This firing takes about 24 hours to get to temp and then cool again. When cool the pots are unloaded and inspected and a final sanding done to bottoms.

The items I create are a mid-fire stoneware fired in oxidation.