How I burnish clay and do inlay ! Oct 17th 2019 with Simon Leach

hey folks welcome welcome as I promised I would do show you something on the burnishing of plates so in order in order to do burnishing well what first of all what is burnishing burnishing is really the compressing of the surface of the clay to the point where it becomes smooth and it becomes slightly shiny quite often in the process so one of the ways that you can do that is by is by using typically people will use like a a smooth round stone a pebble that is shiny and I've used that in the past although I can't find my stone right at this particular moment so I've had to improvise using a book a beer bottle cap so what you find is though in practice that if your clay is very slightly groggy or sandy that it's not altogether satisfactorily trying satisfactory try to burnish it so what you can do is put a fine slip over the top which is very very fine that you put it through like a fine let's say a hundred mesh sieve or something like that like a another slip of it it could be a different color and so you can be decorative in that way with it as well and and then let that sort of harden off and then burnish it in this particular case I'm not going to do that so one of these I've or a couple I've actually as well yeah burnish these so I'll show them to you there so you see the inside of the plate is somewhat shiny now it's not it's not this is more or less sort of slightly experiment because I want to to fire these as I told you one in one inside the other like that inside the kiln I should probably put a little bit of sand to separate them on the inside so they they sit in a little bit of sand each one okay so as you can see there you can get a little bit of a shine to it and I'll talk about that I'm gonna do a couple more with a tool that one of those Thank You Kerry this is one of these I'm not really familiar with them but just giving it a go you know and I just done some carving as you can see around the rim here utilizing this so what I will do with that is in fact take some white slip and paint that over into these engraved cracks engraved not cracks engravings I've prepared here using using this tool and and then clean it back so it's one is the application and then you have to scrape it back so that it just remains in the a little engraving that you've done alright so yeah got a bit of my guitar music playing in the background there but no doubt I'm gonna be penalized by YouTube for playing music without the without the the musicians consent we'll see we'll see what happens sometimes I like to play some music with my videos it's like well if you play videos then you know they get demonetised so I thought okay well I'll make up my own music and play it then and and listen to that they can't complain about that can they will say okay yeah today is a really unpleasant weather out there quite cold probably in the 40s and blowing like crazy I think it's something to do with this storm coming up the East Coast so another way that you can you can do this is using the back of a spoon basically you can use anything that's hard and slightly rounded in order to get a burnished effect hang glass put on the neck [Music] just centrum up like that this is really quite easy to do and I all I'm gonna do is hold this bottle cap to the I mean I'll be honest with you the bottle caps not that maybe the ideal thing to use but what it does is it basically closes up you see the pores the pores of the clay if you like and renders it smooth and of course that is more practical from a functional point of view from you know cooking out of or eating out of but it really it it performs the same function as just bring the camera off a trifle and get a bit closer there was a time when I used to take my camera strapped it to the side of my head that was before the days of GoPro so you can see there so you're you'll see as I use the bottle cap here now you really need to hit it at the right time to do this if it's too soft it won't it won't it won't get a sheen to it it won't get a smooth just trying to get the reflection right so you can see it dddd it doesn't take too long and then I find by just rubbing my hand a certain sort of oils in the skin of your in your skin that when you just apply your fingers and just rub it you want get on some time okay with that without getting too you know fanatical about it I mean you know you can get quite a nice finish just as I've done there take another one tap center it over there should I put this camera somewhere so doing it on the wheel like I'm doing is one way I mean if I was doing like something it wasn't round like a sculptural little piece you know then I would probably I would just go over it like like this you see but because it's we have the advantage of the wheel we can dddddd so yeah having a groggy clay now this clay is a little bit groggy bit sandy and now if you have a plate this a little bit group with grooves in it you're now or throwing throwing rings or something like that then this isn't gonna work really maybe I should have done it a little bit smoother dddd yeah it's this sort of primitive way that people with who didn't have knowledge of glazes and glazing would would finish their work you know to to render them sort of useful for eating out of and that kind of thing easier to clean more hygienic you know because the surface has been kind of sealed dddddd I'm gonna need a sip of tea hang on get talk you know I forget my tea and it gets cold I don't like cold tea not particularly ditty yeah so we ought to do another video at some point on this and a little bit more because what you can do is you see you can like it like I did on the on the rim of that one with the pattern where I could do a pattern on the inside here you see you all around fill it in with a slip scrape it back and then burnish it well you know it's yeah I could do that once you know once in a blue moon you know but it's kind of time-consuming and laborious I may not want to do that in the grand scheme of things if you know what I mean from just up a production point of view getting things done you know yeah that one needs actually a little bit more working on I'll be honest I've got one more here you know I'm gonna put this back on the tripod because I expect you're gonna be getting dizzy apart from the fact that I am - a hand yes there's no great mysteries about about burnishing really just throw it first of all you want to make it smooth as possible and then using a bottle cap a stone in the back of a spoon you know what you can even use you on your fingernails surprisingly if you just rub the back of your fingernail over the surface of the clay when it's one is kind of I would describe it as leather hard but not soft leather hard if you know to me a little bit what I would describe as getting a little bit dry but not yet properly dry in terms of the color you know you know the color that clay goes through is it dry we don't want it so it's it's getting dry going becoming white looking want to catch it before that stage at least in my experience that's been yeah just rub your fingers over it you know it just gets quite a quite shy my clay body that I use I use a clay from standard this is 306 is what I use most of time it it is it is it's groggy rook grog in it it doesn't really feel groggy when you throw it but when you trim it you see the grog in it you know definitely got it because that's slightly your enemy when you're doing this burnishing game I quite like seeing areas of where it's been burnished and then areas where where it hasn't so you get the kind of contrast I find that interesting appealing you yeah but the stove lit today not my wood stove my gas stove over there got it on so now I'm just gonna give it my finger treatment here a little bit like that let's have a look at that one Casey so here on the rim you get the contrast you don't get that I quite like to see that one thing I am noticing is that is where I put my seal there right opposite that on the inside there I can see you see there see the seal is very slightly sticking through well obviously I can't try and push that back now because it would just it's too hard it'll crack the pot so I'm giving it a wipe over with my fingers ladies now the thing is when when when it comes to firing these I'll be honest with you I haven't had a lot of experience firing burnished work at Kohn 10 temperatures it's usually when I do this kind of thing it's usually to do for pit firing you know I'm in the process of making a little pit fire kiln outside the window here I think I've mentioned it the other day but I've not I'm not got any further with it it's it's out there you'll see if that little box of all that square those bricks that's gonna be my my my kiln you see just a sawdust sawdust firing put the pots in there cover them with sawdust mix them around you know and you just light it from the top and then put a piece of tin over the top and a couple of bricks so you can breathe and then that'll hold fire down you know over a period of six or eight hours and your pots will come out nice and nice and black and shiny but yes I mean I think with burnishing and then firing it at Kohn 10 I don't think that I think the shine will go I don't think the shines gonna be there this still be smooth you knows what you want I think maybe I should have taken a bit more care when I threw these to make sure they were perhaps a little smoother and what the in fact off would have made the burnishing a little easier okay my fingers over it get a bit of shine on there all right so that's that one that one oh this one is really waiting to have some white slip means I'm gonna go and find the white slip I don't know if I'm gonna have time to do that today but somewhere in this bucket oh I think that is it actually wait slip white slip indeed hang on let's quickly maybe I could just get the tripod back and then get this camera up here on the tripod that's what I'm gonna do is just give that mate I use this not so long ago do you remember so it's it's it's fairly well and mix cough actually I use the blender at night so so this guy get a bad thing we leave the least I can do this kind of Parkway to show you I'm gonna need a brush it's small small brush yeah so what I'm gonna do this just take some of this you see and then I'm going you don't have to be too careful about this but I don't want to plaster white stuff everywhere what I want to do is just get it into these into these grooves you see maybe I should just paint it on my this might be quick it might be more messy as well I know don't they know let's have that camera down here quickly see if I can strap it to the side of my head again I don't want to get any of it down in there down there you know I don't want it get in there I suppose I could clean it up it came to it that's it get it into the detail you see something like that we're nearly done so once this is ideally should wait for this to dry back as you appreciate it's gonna take a little bit of time but just there where it's already dry there a bit let's see if I can find something to scrape it with Oh have I got something to scrape it I mean yeah I mean ideally a blade yes a blade why not a one of these ok go try and do this and yeah hang on let me put the camera up here again then I'm gonna bring it up to the camera something like that so now what you got to do what I have to do is you have to clean it back you see the EDD now some of you watching this are gonna think oh my goodness I love that that is beautiful I want to do that maybe if you are one of those people then do it do not deliberate so where I put it on a bit thicker in places it's it's going to be too still too wet for me to do but DDD are you getting inspired out there the cameras not too close and out of focus but just have to do it carefully so you don't disrupt the surface you're just scraping off that so what I'll do in a minute is I'll yeah I'm not gonna do the whole thing now because that's gonna be two couple time-consuming but I'll just get a sponge a very be careful be careful with the Spanish because you can okay look there I've done I've done half of it you see so let me just get a sponge see if this will do the trick I just want to clean it up a bit alright so I'm just gonna wipe it real gonna be careful because you can smudge it you want that to stay nice and kind of white looking at you thee the engraving trouble is if you sponge it you sponge the darker color colored clay over the top of the white you see which I think I might have done a bit might be a case of waiting to the right moment to do that but you'll be you'll see in the firing that that will come out a lot a lot more contrast see them what I think I can get it now with a sponge all right so just gives you it gives you an idea all right that is utilizing that tool that carries semi and in filling there you could call this I guess you'd call it inlay really alright okay folks there it is a little bit of burnishing and a little bit of a little bit of inlay thanks for watching hope that was inspiring to you if you want to come on a workshop you too late yeah people that they want to come on workshops and wish they had and they just didn't

Channel: Simon Leach

Views: 8,297

Rating: 4.8214288 out of 5

Keywords: how to burnish, how to do inlay, wheel thrown pottery, hand made pots, hand thrown pots, pottery workshops, clay work, hand made artesan, artesania, la ceramica, vall d'alba, ceramistas, el torno, el barro, artistas en barro, porcelain, raku, simon leach pottery, bernard leach, david leach, lowerdown pottery, st ives leach pottery, millheim, bezalel, keep practicing, ceramics monthly

Id: YyOHKdJwOyA

Length: 29min 51sec (1791 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 17 2019