Stop Glazing Your Pottery

Glaze is wonderful stuff but it's not the only way to finish pottery and a lot of people unfortunately think it is. Let's talk about just how food safe glazed and unglazed pottery can be and what glaze alternatives exist. There are many good reasons to not glaze your pottery and one of those is the texture and beauty of the raw clay surface with gets lost under gobs of chemical glaze.

🔗 LINKS

❤️ Please help support my channel

🛍 Shop for pottery related goodies

📚 Improve your pottery skills

⭐️ Social media

0:00 Why I hate glaze
0:30 History of unglazed pottery
1:35 Is unglazed pottery food safe?
2:34 Is glazed pottery food safe?
2:57 Common sense for pottery that is not "food safe"
3:41 Why not glaze pottery?
5:27 Some glaze alternatives

📬 Send me mail
Andy Ward PO Box 43601 Tucson, AZ 85733

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

[AncientPottery]

Everybody wants to defend glaze from what they perceive as an attack. I am not attacking glaze and glaze does not need defending. Unglazed pottery needs defending because it is always getting put down and treated like it is somehow less than glazed. YouTube is full of videos extolling the virtues of glaze, this little video is just a small voice calling out in the wilderness, asking you to give unglazed a try.

[inana]

As an Algerian (North African/ Mediterranean) i totally confirm we do use traditional ceramics made with hands and unglazed, most of it is done with red clay. Altho some really sophisticated ceramics is sold, i still find it super interesting to understand how it was done before. Natural Ceramics have aged since antiquity so if it can be a better alternative for health and environment I'm totally down for it 🙏🏻
Also huge thanks to you Andy for teaching us so much things, I'll forever be thankful!!

[OktoPutsch]

honestly i like the mix of both, like the japanese craftmen like to play with, showing both the raw aspect of material and the joys of some glazed touches. Best of worlds

[NayrbRellimer]

I would like to add a few comments:

1. Some of the earliest examples of glazed pottery come from the bronze age Shang Dynasty in China.

2. Although many modern glazes are actually made from synthetic chemicals, the earliest pottery glazes were instead made from wood ash, slaked lime and/or feldspar mixed with a clay slip.

3. Although the standard modern practice for glazing is to "bisque" the pottery first and then fire the pottery again after glazing; originally, glazed pottery would've been glazed while the pot was still green and fired only once. This method fell out of favor once pottery became a large industry since greenware is harder to carry long-distances without damaging it than low fired pottery. A lot of studio potters now have no idea that they can save time and enery by glazing their pottery in the greenware stage since they don't have to worry about shipping the pottery to a separate facility to be glazed.

4. From what few videos I've seen on sealing and washing earthenware, this cooking material doesn't appear any harder to care for than cast iron since both cooking materials require washing without soap and have active surfaces that can be affected by food cooked in or eaten on the pot.

5. Other than for decorative purposes, the only reason I can think of using a glaze on pottery is if you insist on using soap to wash your pottery. Even then, the soap can still soak into the bottom "dry-footed" area on the bottom of the glazed pot and cause further problems in the future.

[Sheepdog]

always loved Korean and Japanese pottery...they used glazes for artistic expression. The ancient Jomon pottery was unglazed and had it's own artistic value, then the Koreans moved into Japan, and somewhere down the line someone started a glaze-craze, the pottery itself was less expressive and the glaze took the spotlight. Totally agree with the natural connection to unglazed pottery. I have no problems eating out of my unglazed dishes, never got sick.

[Rdasboss]

I mean everything is chemicals, and pottery is all about chemical reactions under high heat. There certainly could be harmful stuff in the dirt. However in the grand scheme of things that are likely to kill you it’s probably very low, but its not like there isnt no risk.

[fieldfarmers]

Every time I pull out my bisqued ware, I thought this should be the last step. Every so often it looks more beautiful than the final finished glazed one. Thank you.

[Makap]

I come from India. Traditionally, we have been using unglazed pots for storing water. The pot is scrubbed every day with a brush and fresh water stored in it. It keeps the water cooler than rap water. Unglazed small earthern pots have been used for serving tea, yogurt etc. The yogurt forms well in such pots. They can be cleaned with hot water and reused.

[archkull]

As an absolute beginner to pottery, your channel is a godsend! It's absolutely wonderful to have this much concentrated information that also focuses on the natural aspects of clay and pottery. Thank you so much.

[thialove]

Your channel became a part of my life around a month ago.

This new creative elemental sharing has brought a deeper caring for all the goodness that lays around us.

Thank you for being a wonderful teacher!

[jhm]

Glaze isn't bad its just another approach. the chemicals in most glaze aren't anymore synthetic than the clay itself. I do appreciate the way you are modernizing and investigating some ancient techniques

[pauljs]

I guess one of the easiest ways to deal with some issues is to season the thing in a manner similarly done with wrought iron? Put something that will caramelize or cook onto it, and half burn it at its smoke point. (Generally it's one of the oldest ways of putting a polymer layer on a surface.)

[amanda]

In Brazil we cook in unglazed ceramic pans. We seal it with oil and high temperature. Unglazed cookware is not in most households but it's know to be healthy and the outcome is considered more tasty.

[catsandravens]

Thank you, I didn’t know there were alternatives to using glazes. I’ll keep these in mind when I’m looking at new pottery!

[astrudlang]

Wow, how insightful- I really thought pottery has to be glazed to be easier to use and cleaned… and I thought the beautiful pottery in the backround was glazed..😅very fascinating and beautiful!!!

[clerydesigns]

You have made everything brilliantly clear in just one video. Thank you so much

[seedmeow]

I love your channel!❤❤❤😊
I did 2 years of ceramics in art school and I've been wanting to get back into it. Ive always loved working with clay. But overwhelmed with having to join a studio to do ceramics, or getting a ton of tools to fire and make pottery. But its refreshing to see what you can by choosing to do pottery more primitively.
Its refreshing to realize, I dont need those things I can literally just start doing it by aquiring simple tools.
It's alot more labour but I'll really respect and enjoy the whole process. Your videos are so helpful, I'm glad I watched them before buying a bunch of stuff I don't nessarary need.

[Metal_Master_YT]

people associate all "chemicals" as bad for some reason, and its just as bad as how people think unglazed pottery is bad.
you can easily get glazes from the earth, and use those. many high temperature glazes are simple minerals found in the earth, and are completely safe to eat out of once fired.
properly glazed ceramics can also effectively store food as long as its dry, or properly sealed. and since glaze has many beautiful colors that you can't easily get with natural clay, you can make much more colorful earthenware using it, besides, the materials for the glaze also come from the earth, they are simply purified first, similarly to how you refine your clay before making pottery out of it.

[Benaam-original]

Hi,
I am from India. The festival called Deepavli/Diwali (Deep= lamps, avli=rows) is coming in a few days. Earlier everyone used clay lamps to decorate the houses on this occasion, but now we use LEDs as a substitute for that. It's been like that since decades.

Fortunately people are now encouraging to use the clay lamps again for this festival. Hoping that this Diwali we would see more earthenware than plastic.

[huntersigler]

Your love for pottery is so palpable. I’m glad I found this channel.