A DAY IN THE POTTERY STUDIO

Hi and welcome to my studio. My name is Lily, I'm a ceramicist in London. If you're new here, which many of you will be new here because you know what, I'm new here too. I make functional ceramics here in London, this is my studio, and yeah welcome, welcome to a day in the life of a ceramicist. I generally start my day if it's a nice day out here in the sun. This morning I brought my coffee in from home and I thought, you know what, it's so nice out here, I'm going to start my day out here, plan my day, work out what I'm doing, make a little list. Got a glaze kiln and a bisque kiln to unload and then I am going to make a couple of glazes and I am going to glaze a whole lot of stuff, so join me. I knew the sun was going to come back. It is full on, it is hot, hot, hot. It's 7 past 8 in the morning and it's this hot. I'm glad though, I love the heat. Anyone who's in London who's like, I can't wait for winter again, grow up, winter sucks, this is what we're living for, this is it. It's time to unload the kiln. There's a weird little flashing dot that I don't know what that means. There's potential that there's been an issue with the firing, so I hope not, we'll see. Looks okay, this layer looks okay. This is some stuff from a clay kit, so this is some student's work. Look at it, so cute. Very into this, that is very sweet. This is a funny view, I can't see myself. These are for a commission, for a shop in North London, where they get some happy faces, and they also get some sad faces, and then you've got a whole lot of ridge cups. Next layer. Oh, clay test. Oh my god, stop. This is literally what I've been trying to do for years. Look at that green. This is another variation of green, less good. This green, I've literally been hunting for it my whole life. I'm real happy about that. This is a candle holder I made, I think it's really cute. And then this is a candle holder a student made, which I love. Got some d cups, some stacker cups, which stack on top of each other like that, look very sweet. They also have cute little foot rings. And then some coffee tumblers that I make, they stack. Another coffee cup, which is raw on the outside and white on the inside. And we've got some blue stuff, so some blue ridge cups. These are potentially for a shop in Denmark. Cute little set. One last stacker, and one last candle holder. Right, so just very quick chat about glazes. I have been trying to get this glaze for my whole ceramics life, and I've done it. I'm so happy. I was trying to get a matte glaze for a really long time, a matte green, and I often, like this one was quite close, but it just didn't look that good. It would do weird things like this, it's crawled, or it would usually be really dark, like this one, or this one, it's super muddy. But then I changed the base glaze and we've done it, so it's a really nice vibrant green. So I guess that's a lesson for me, is just keep trying it. This is probably two or three years worth of tests, just whenever I have the energy to do some testing, I will. And the reason I was going for this green and this matte glaze over and over again. There's more in here. Look, they're everywhere. Is because I have a really nice matte red, like an orangey red, which I really like, and I wanted the same in the green, but for some reason the colorants just changed too much with the rest of the ingredients in the glaze. They go super muddy like this, instead of bright and like this, which is the different base glaze. So yeah, I don't know, keep testing glazes, it's very exciting. If you want to know actually how to test glazes, I have a whole glaze testing video, which can be found wherever the thing pops up. If you also want to know about glazing in general, this is where to go. I was going to do a whole lot of glaze mixing today, but I don't have enough ingredients, so I'm just going to do a little bit of admin, order the ingredients that I need, and then I'll keep going about my day. So I've just ordered all my ingredients, then I had a little surprise visit from my boyfriend's mum Erin. She's over from New Zealand at the moment, so she came and gave my plants a bit of TLC, because I'll tell you what, I'm a terrible plant lover. I'm unloading a bisque firing here, and you can see I'm quite happy. She's beautiful, she's graceful, she's elegant, I love her. Can you see it there? I don't know. I'm going to have to think about how I glaze this baby, which is always a scary thing. Another one, are you a sweetheart? Honestly, welcome to my life, sweet angels. Sometimes I make something and I just want to be in their presence for a while, you know? I love you. Slide teapot, I made this on my Instagram live, so if you want to watch that video, it's on there somewhere, in my videos tab on Instagram. Some hand-built little cups. This guy, this guy's cool. I'm definitely going to make more of these. These are the frowny faces. You saw the smiley face that came out of the glaze kiln before, so these ones have just been misplaced. Oh, sad buddy. It's gonna be okay. These are the happy ones. I'm so stupid. Lunch time with your girl, Lily Tarantino. I'm new to YouTube, so I'm trying some stuff with my editing, bit of fun. Anyway, I get to have lunch out here on if it's sunny. Not showing you my lunch because it wasn't overly aesthetic, and I don't really want to ruin the vibe. I think you can just kind of imagine what I had for lunch. It's glazing time this afternoon. When I unload a bisque bar and have it just kind of all on the table there, and I need to do some glazing, I sort them out into little groups of glaze colour, and then I just put them in a little pile. Today I'm going to glaze some nude stuff. I'll put all nude stuff in this pile, and then I'll just kind of put stuff in other piles and glaze it maybe today, maybe tomorrow. It's apron time. Immediate update, I just realised that there's not enough glaze, so I have to just quickly mix a little bit more up, so just one sec. I mean, I'm going to edit this out, so not one sec for you, just immediately. Just broke my mask. Anyway, that's done. Glazing stuff, I always just give a big to get rid of any like dust or just crap that's kind of like gone on it. If you want to see a whole glazing video, this is the link in the pop-up here. Oh, what am I going to do with this? Listen, the answer is yes, I do want it nude. I do. This is how I'm doing it. I pour the glaze on the inside and then I just tip it out. I'm going to leave the outside raw because it looks beautiful and chic, and then just doing a little foot ring there. Yep, getting my ---- done. It's good to just kick in the middle of the day. It will make you feel great. Glazing done. Loading the kiln with this stuff. I was going to load the rest of the kiln with the rest of the stuff, but I didn't quite have enough things to fill it up with, so just this layer was done. We're kind of running out of light and I am running out of energy, but I have glazed this lot of stuff. I've got another lot of stuff to glaze as well. I have ordered some of the colorant that I need for my green glaze, which should hopefully arrive tomorrow. So I'm going to make the glaze, not add the colorant. Tomorrow I'll finish it off. I hate making glazes, so I know that I'll be much more likely to actually do the glazing than I want to do if I do the hard bit now. So we're going to do that. Then I'll glaze the rest of that stuff, and then I'm going to go home. It's a pretty good day. I'm real tired actually. It kind of hit me after lunch, so let's keep going. I truly hate glazing and making glaze, but because I had the energy from getting this new glaze out of the kiln, I was pretty excited. So made it, felt good. The next day the new colorants and stuff did come, so I have successfully made the whole glaze now. And I'm going to finish that other glazing now. I wish it would stay this color. It's so nice. It's going to darken loads, but it's like a little strawberry shortcake. So I'm going to sponge these. You can see that they need a little bit of filling, so I'll do that tomorrow. It's tomorrow's job. I've just finished for the day and look who's arrived. Who is it? It's Bea. I will be making new videos every week. On a Sunday afternoon I will upload a new one for you. So I'll see you in a couple of weeks. You can follow me on Instagram and on TikTok as well at Mei.Ceramics. And I mean the usual, like and subscribe, whatever. It makes a big difference to me. Though if you do fancy it, just click that little like button. I really appreciate it. Thank you for joining me. This is my cat Amos. I will see you in two weeks. Goodbye.