The Pottery Vocabulary Cheat Sheet: Terms Every Beginner Should Know

# The Pottery Vocabulary Cheat Sheet Walking into a pottery studio for the first time can feel like everyone's speaking a different language. Here's your translator. ## Clay States - **Plastic** - Fresh, workable clay. Soft and moldable. - **Leather-hard** - Firm enough to handle but still damp. Perfect for trimming, carving, attaching handles. - **Bone dry (greenware)** - Completely air-dried. Very fragile. Ready for first firing. - **Bisqueware** - After first firing. Porous, hard, ready for glazing. ## Firing Terms - **Bisque fire** - First firing (usually cone 06-04). Burns out moisture and organics, hardens clay. - **Glaze fire** - Second firing (cone varies by clay/glaze). Melts glaze into glass coating. - **Cone** - NOT a temperature! A measure of heat-work (time + temperature). Cone 6 = about 2232F. - **Reduction** - Firing with limited oxygen (gas kilns). Changes glaze colors dramatically. - **Oxidation** - Firing with plenty of oxygen (electric kilns). More predictable results. ## Techniques - **Throwing** - Making pots on the wheel. - **Hand-building** - Making without a wheel (coil, slab, pinch). - **Wedging** - Kneading clay to remove air bubbles and even out moisture. - **Trimming** - Carving the bottom of a leather-hard pot on the wheel for a foot ring. - **Scoring & slipping** - Scratching + applying wet clay to join pieces (like pottery glue). - **Pulling a handle** - Shaping a handle from a lump of clay using water and gravity. ## Glaze Terms - **Underglaze** - Color applied before or after bisque firing, under the glaze layer. - **Crawling** - Glaze pulling away from the surface during firing (usually a defect). - **Pinholing** - Tiny holes in fired glaze from gases escaping. - **Running** - Glaze melting and flowing downward (can be intentional or disastrous). - **Dipping** - Submerging bisqueware in liquid glaze. - **Wax resist** - Applying wax so glaze won't stick (for patterns or keeping bottoms clean). ## Studio Lingo - **Reclaim/recycle** - Rehydrating dried clay scraps to reuse. - **Kiln wash** - Protective coating on kiln shelves to prevent glaze drips from sticking. - **Bat** - Flat disc that attaches to the wheel head (for easy removal of pots). - **S-crack** - A crack in the bottom of a pot (from uneven drying or improper throwing). ## The Cone Confusion People say "I fire to cone 6" - here's what that means in practice: - Low-fire (cone 06-01, 1830-2080F): Earthenware, bright colors - Mid-fire (cone 1-6, 2110-2232F): Most studio pottery - High-fire (cone 7-13, 2262-2455F): Stoneware, porcelain The higher the cone, the stronger and more vitrified (waterproof) the clay becomes. --- Bookmark this one. You'll come back to it.