What is Pottery Painting?
Paint-a-pot or pottery painting is a business that operates as a café where you can paint ready made pots. What you say? You don’t make your own pots and then paint them? That’s right, you paint ready made manufactured pots.
We’re not a pottery painting studio, but we do get a lot of calls about pottery painting. We’re a pottery making studio, where you’ll make the entirety of your pot from a lump of clay, manipulating it by hand and tool to create your own masterpieces. You may at this point paint them with slips, a liquid clay, and/or you’ll then glaze (or paint) your pots when they’re fired too. You can try our hand-build a mug pottery class where you’ll paint them too.
Technically potter’s don’t put paint on their pots? Paint is made from plastics, which are far less durable than ceramics, and what pottery makers actually use to colour and finish their pots is glaze, slip, underglaze and oxides. These are made from natural materials, usually different types of rocks and metals. Sometimes potter’s will use a brush to apply these glazes, slips and oxides, and this may be where the term pottery painting comes from, but brushing is just one method of application. You can pour, dip, and spatter your way along with many other techniques.
The ready made pots in a paint-your-own-pot café have already been biscuit fired, so you can apply your glaze to them with a brush. Nothing to do with biscuits, but pottery goes through the process of 2 firings. The first firing is at a low temperature and is called the biscuit firing. It’s called this because the pottery is weak at this temperature and can break like a biscuit. Once a glaze is applied it goes through a second firing to melt the glaze and make the pottery harder.
Pottery painting is a good way to drop in and keep the kids occupied for a bit. However, it hardly compares to the satisfaction and enjoyment of making pottery from mud, with your bare hands. It’s fun manipulating clay into objects you can use and you can also ‘paint’ the pots that you make too. But what is the ‘paint’ that we use?
Pottery Paint
There isn’t such a think as pottery paint, what potteries use is glaze and slip. So what is glaze and slip?
What is Glaze?
In simple terms glaze is a glassy coating made to fit onto the outer layer of a ceramic pot. It makes it impervious to water, food safe and easy to clean. It is just as durable as ceramic and can enhance the strength of a pot helping them to last thousands of years. It can be applied with a brush, perhaps where the term pottery painting comes from, but it can also be poured, dipped or sprayed on.
What is Slip?
Slip is a liquid clay that can be applied to clay pots before they have been fired. It’s used in a decorative fashion to add colour and patterns. It can also be applied with a brush, but sponging, dipping, pouring and slip ‘trailing’ are also common methods. England has a tradition of slipware pottery, and you can see such beautiful examples made by modern potters such as Fitch & McAndrew.
What is Underglaze?
Underglazes are manufactured and pigmented colours within an independent medium that’s not quite slip nor glaze. Underglazes can come in vivid colours, but can also be quite expensive.
What are Oxides?
Metallic oxides are metals in their raw forms, such as iron oxide, copper carbonate, cobalt carbonate, chrome oxide, and manganese dioxide among others. These are the materials (or chemicals) that colour the world.
Pottery painting or Paint Your Own Pot (PYOP) studios usually use a combination of commercially manufactured glaze or underglazes applied to bisqueware (low fired pottery) to paint pottery.
Can you paint pots with paints?
Paints are various concoctions of plastics and chemicals, whereas pottery and ceramics are long-lasting and durable materials that can last thousands and thousands of years. The oldest things we have in the world are pots made by the hands of our ancestors. These can be carbon dated back 24,000-30,000 years old. You can indeed paint pots with paints, there’s nothing stopping you, but you’re devaluing the material, so make sure not to tell me or any other potters that’s what you’re doing, and be careful not to put them in the dishwasher as it’ll melt the paint.
Pottery Painting vs Pottery Making
Pottery painting is like to pottery making what a colouring-in book is to illustration, a trailer is to a movie, or what a ready meal is to a chef. If you’ve had a go at pottery painting in Manchester, then try a pottery course, to get your hands stuck into clay and create your own masterpieces from scratch. The classes are popular and as such you won’t be able to drop in, you’ll need to book a pottery class in advance. Try our make and paint your own pottery mug workshop or one of our other taster pottery classes in Manchester where you can also learn to throw on the wheel, all of which are perfect for someone looking to have a go for the first time.