Kara Wrote a Book! | Kara Leigh Ford | Episode 812

Kara Leigh Ford | Episode 812

Kara Leigh Ford is a potter based near Bath in the South West of England. At the time of this episode Kara has been a professional potter for 7 years and a hobbyist for 13 more. Kara studied fine art at university but didn’t touch clay until she graduated. Mostly self taught, Kara now teaches others how to make pots via her online community called Pottery Club. She has just written her first book called ‘Pottery for Beginners’ published at the end of 2021′.

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What is the first thing a person needs to know about clay?

That’s a good question. Well, the first thing I would recommend people do is grab a big chunk of it, you can get a kilo of clay from your local hobby craft or pottery supply store for not very much money. And I would just play with it. So just feel it. Probably the most important thing for them to learn to begin with is kind of the consistency of it and how it feel on the skin and how it reacts to pressure, how it reacts to the warmth of your hands, to being stretched, to being squished. That’s the first thing I would…I wouldn’t necessarily say that is knowledge, it’s just kind of getting to know it, getting to know the material. I think that is most important thing for someone who has never, ever encountered clay or pottery but really wants to give it a go. Just buy some clay and play with it.

Should one start on a wheel or should they start doing hand building?

Well, personally I would recommend folks start with hand building, just because you can hand build without any equipment whatsoever. You can make absolutely beautiful pottery just with your finger tips and some clay. So that would be the kind of thing I would start out with. It also really helps you get to know the material.

How do you keep from getting cracks in your bottoms, in the bottom of your pots?

Cracks in my bottoms, well, (laughter) there are a few tips that you use to avoid s cracks. For one thing you need to wedge your clay really well. So you need to prepare your clay before you start using it. So you can spiral wedge or rams head, you can slam cut wedge, but just to make sure the clay is really well mixed and there’s not dry bits or wet bits and that will really help you to avoid unevenness, which is often why you get cracks, uneven drying. Compressing the base, so making sure you are compressing the particles of the clay really nicely together. You also don’t want any standing water and you want to make sure you are removing the water all the time just because the water is going to be absorbed by the clay and it’s going to get mushy and when it dries out it might pull itself apart.

Is there value in potters spending time with other potters to learn from each other?

Absolutely. That’s one of the things that I am looking forward to doing this year is going and visiting other potters in their studios and having a good ole natter with them about their processes about their work, yeah, I can’t wait to do that. I can’t wait to meet up with pottery pals again. I think we can all give each other little tidbits and share our little tricks that we have picked up along the way. And we are all still learning, we will never know it all.

Do you recommend beginners, when it comes to glazing, to dip their pots or do you recommend brushing the glaze onto their pots?

For beginners I would recommend brushing, using brush on glazes. Only because I feel like you get a little bit more control. With dipping glazes it can get quite messy. You also need quite a big amount of glaze in order for that to kind of work properly. If you’ve only got a small bucket you can’t fit your entire mug in that bucket and you are going to get lines and drips going on, so I would suggest going for brush on glazes to begin with and having smaller pots will help you explore the different glazes and help you find something that really lights you up.

They always say that the teacher learns more than the student, so what did you learn from the process of writing the book?

Oh wow, yeah, you are absolutely right, I think the teacher definitely learns more than the student. I’ve learned so much through the process of writing this book. I have learned about myself, that I am more capable than I thought I was and I can do really hard things when I need to and when I want to. And just the joy that pottery brings to people. I kind of knew that before but writing a book all about it has just kind of re-cemented that for me. This craft is just amazing. Everything about it, it’s just magical. Taking a block of mud and turning it into something beautiful or useable, or both, it never ceases to amaze me how awesome pottery is.