There's an ongoing struggle taking the potter's vision of water, dirt and very high temperature, and taming those three ingredients. The art potter, he just does it once and doesn't worry about it. The pottery is touched about 18 times from the time the pug is created until the time it's taken off our kiln cars. We just do it in a much bigger way than having wine together and doing it with our feet. Using different recipes, workers blend water with varying proportions of Kentucky clay, kaolin, silica, feldspar, kyanite, talc and iron from 50-pound sacks to yield different types of pottery.
Most potters work in one clay body.
They make 10 shapes or so. In a typical year, we'll make 100 different shapes. A pug mill extrudes the air out of the clay, compressing it to create a stronger raw material that stands up better to handling and heat, Gil explains. Like a giant KitchenAid, a slip mixer stirs 1,000 gallons of clay suspended in water. Several different traditional methods are employed to form everything from teapots to cookie jars.