Ceramic Science Primer

For all skill levels

SPRING 2026 schedule of classes

Register by: March 5th

Course Description

Ever wonder how the varieties of clay bodies and glazes are formulated? Did you know that the materials we use today to make clays and glazes were actually formed in nature millions of years ago? Or how about the fact that clay and glazes are made using the same ingredients? This class will take you on a journey to the center of the earth and back (figuratively, of course) all the while exploring the chemical nature of the earth itself.

Students will explore with alchemist’s delight, chemicals with strange names they've only seen in countless books on ceramics listed in ‘recipes’. Perhaps you followed these recipes like a zombie not knowing or understanding why any given material was included. It's not like flour and water, you know.

True, this course isn't as touchy-feely as the ever popular wheel- thrown or hand-built pottery classes taught here and there's even some reading involved, in fact, there's a lot of reading. But don't worry, you'll be having so much fun learning how to balance the scales or use terms like ‘water of plasticity’ and ‘quartz inversion’, plus be able to explain with authority the difference between a kaolin and a ball clay, that the reading of a technical text will simply go unnoticed.

By the end of the course, you'll never look at a rock the same way again...and you thought it was mud!

The only prerequisite is your desire to learn, especially by doing.