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Katie Brentnal | Episode 1273
Katie Brentnal is the New Zealand potter and educator behind Katie B Ceramics, where she helps hobby potters understand their glazes and create results they love. With a background in adult learning, Katie makes glazing approachable through practical experiments, creative techniques, and her digital workbook, The Glaze Personality Method, which has sold over 1,200 copies worldwide.
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You had a post on Instagram back on July 19th titled “Seven Things About Glazing That Nobody Told Me”. So I thought we would go through each one of these and hear your insight on each “Thing”. Here is the first one: You said, The photo of that glaze combo is almost meaningless.
Yeah, look, it’s someone else’s hands. It’s in someone else’s kiln. It’s someone else’s clay body. You’re going to get different results. So you always need to test your own glaze combinations.
Number 2, you said, Understand before you buy.
Yeah, look, the new glaze that you’ve seen is not going to be a magic fix because you’ve seen one photo on Pinterest that makes it look a certain way. You need to understand what you want that glaze to do for you, not just the pretty picture you’ve seen online.
This next one was really fascinating. You said, The disappointing firings are where the learning is.
That you have to fail to learn is the faster you fail, the faster you’re going to get those learnings. And you’re going to be a better potter if you can see what went wrong. So you can try something different next time.
For #4 was, Glazing and forming are a conversation, not two separate things. What do you mean by that?
If you get to the very end and you’re figuring out, okay, I’ve got this form, I’m going to chuck a glaze on it. It’s not so considered. So if you’re making a form with the glaze in mind, you’re going to get a much more cohesive result. So you’re designing a form of texture so glaze can catch into the texture or you’re rounding the foot so glaze isn’t falling off the side. So the more you can see that end-to-end picture, I think the more cohesive a result you’re going to get.
Next came this short line, Find your floater.
It’s like a cheat code, I swear. So floating glazes, right? You can make it act like 2 glazes, like I said. It makes it look like you’ve worked much harder than you have when you’re glazing it because the results are so beautiful. And often beginners will gravitate more towards those flowing moving glazes. So the faster you can find your floater, I think the faster you’re going to get some very easy results that look very professional and beautiful.
Here’s one that I struggle with, but I think it’s so good. You stated, Take notes, even bad ones.
You’re never going to remember what you did. Especially if you’re trying something different each time. Even if it’s a scroll, it means that you can pick up patterns in your work if you’ve done the same thing three times. Or you can go back to a combination that you did a year ago that’s suddenly resonating with you. and know exactly what you did instead of guessing.
Here was the last thing you said, Your glazing voice isn’t something you decide.
I think this is about style, right? It is something that builds and accumulates over time. So you can see a picture of someone else’s work that you’re trying to emulate and you can give that a go. But it’s really going to develop the deeper you go and the more things that you try along that same track. So you have to test, you have to try it again, you have to push past the failures, and that is how you’re going to land on something that feels like you and that you’re very proud of.
Book
11/22/63 by Stephen King
Contact
Instagram: @katiebceramics