Pottery

Centering is the first skill you learn at the pottery wheel and the one that takes longest to feel natural. The breakthrough almost always comes from the same place: you stop fighting the clay with your hands and start using your whole body weight instead.

Electric and gas kilns don't just fire at different costs — they fire in fundamentally different atmospheres. Electric kilns oxidize; gas kilns can reduce. Reduction does things to iron and copper glazes that electricity simply cannot replicate, and once you've seen a reduction-fired pot, you understand why studio potters argue about this so much.

Earthenware fires below about 2,100°F and stays porous. Stoneware fires above that and vitrifies — the clay body partially melts into a glassy, watertight material. The temperature difference is roughly 200°F. What it changes about the resulting object is almost everything.

Burnishing is the process of polishing leather-hard clay with a smooth tool until the surface compresses and begins to reflect light. No glaze is involved. The shine comes from the clay itself, and it survives firing to produce a surface that has been valued for ten thousand years.

Pit firing is the oldest firing method for ceramics. A hole is dug, pots are stacked inside with combustible material, the pit is lit and covered. What emerges, after hours of burning and cooling, carries flame markings, carbon flash, and the colors of whatever was in the pit with it.