What defines low-fire ceramics?

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Find all your pottery and ceramics sculpture needs, including the largest stock of geopottery forms at CornellStudioSupply.com. At Cornell Studio Supply, we are owned and operated. Four potters, five potters. [Music] Hello, my name is Kathy King and welcome to the For Flux Sake podcast. I'm coming to you from the Harvard Ceramics program in R Fair City, Austin, Massachusetts. I'm here with rows and mat cats of the world famous Ceramic materials workshop and they are ready to answer your burning questions about clay and glaze. [Music] Well, hello, mat and rows. Hey, Kathy. Hello, Kathy. I have a new sense of independence in my life. [Laughter] A new season is upon us and a new lifestyle comes to us all. It's true, but I thought perhaps you could tell our listeners about why I have that independent feeling. Well, because we are independent now. We've gone through some evolution and some changes. As many of you know, we were part of a network and we had a central sponsor. And that sponsor is now. Now we're a beautiful butterfly. [Laughter] A merge from our ceramic cocoon. I'm probably a moth. No one likes me. I hate your sweaters. [Laughter] But, uh, [Laughter] And my tomatoes. Yeah, you guys are butterflies. But yeah, so we did have a foundational partner that put together the whole Brickyard network, which we love being part of. And unfortunately, they've gone through some changes over the summer. And they can no longer sponsor the network. And so now we are still for fluxic. I hate to disappoint you. It's the same dumb stuff. [Laughter] But, but people can can get even more of us. Yes. Yes. So they can join our new brand new Patreon page where for a small fee every month, you can get more of us. Uh-oh. [Laughter] Can they un-patreon? Are we going to have to start paying people out from Patreon? Good thing or bad thing, I don't know. But it's more Kathy and I. Hey! [Laughter] Well, this is new to me. I've happened been part of Patreon though I've heard about it. I've heard of other people using it really successfully. So I'm excited to be part. But how long have you been using Patreon? Well, gosh. Since like 2017, mood. Yeah. On, on Serenade Tears Workshop for Education, we have Patreon that really uh helps us like literally pay our bills. Like Rose and I really are able to to to get things done with Patreon. And the reality is is running this podcast takes money. And you know, having that network before was a huge advantage. But we need to keep our dooser banner around. [Laughter] Yeah. We gotta know as it doesn't happen. Are you guys getting paid for this? Uh, Ben is. I'll wait. Yeah. Check's in the mail, Kathy. [Laughter] Backtaded for seasons. [Laughter] Ooh. But no, it's no joke. Producing this podcast takes, it takes money. They're, believe it or not, you guys. This show is edited. [Laughter] I know. Despite what it sounds like. Yeah. [Laughter] Um, and yeah, that our network helped us to do that. But now we are Rose and I are putting it under the umbrella of CMW. Ceremetheal's workshop, our online education company. And we're going to keep it going. But we have some great sponsors already. We have groups and companies that have come into sponsor us. And that's a huge advantage. If you run a company you want to advertise with us, reach out to for Fluxake [email protected]. We'd love to bring in more advertisers. That absolutely helps. But really, at the end of the day, you know, we need to NPR this shit you guys. [Laughter] We got to fundraise this to keep this thing going. Because it does cost money to keep this podcast free for all of you. So some of the things that we are doing to make that a reality is, it's first and foremost, Patreon. If you don't know Patreon, right? Patreon is a way to support your favorite creators on a regular basis. So for us, we've got a monthly subscription, where if you support us on a monthly basis, you will get free stuff. [Laughter] It's like, "Whether or not that's a burden, you can just delete it if it just makes you feel better to provide us with money and then just delete the free stuff." [Laughter] We will have extra content on there. Okay, so this is the big one, right? You guys, so we have a massive backlog of questions. Now, I know people submit their questions. They're always like, "Why didn't you answer my question?" Yes, what guys? We have orders of magnitude more questions that have been submitted than we have had the time to answer. And, you know, we're trying to get as much as we can, but we can only do so much. You want your question fast-tracked supporters on Patreon? Boom! Top of the line, Patreon episodes. Those will be there for our Patreon supporters, just for supporting us on a monthly recurring basis. We've got other stuff coming up in Patreon as well. But it literally helps us to put this show out and, you know, to keep it free. Because otherwise, we're going to have to turn to nasty stuff. And, you know, we're trying to keep this ceramics focused. I don't want to have to advertise mattresses or help supplements or any of that kind of stuff, which you hear on all your other podcasts. We want to keep this ceramics focused. We want to keep this education focused. And so we need your support. Yeah, we need to keep ceramics. Yeah. Keep us ceramics focused. Yeah, that's a good one. That's our new tagline. I'm going to add that to the Patreon. Yeah, yeah. But it is no joke. Please, please consider supporting us on our Patreon. Then what is that Patreon address? Do you know it? Patreon.com/forfluxakepodcast Yeah, and we've got links in the show notes that you can go into it right now. Kathy, you're not doing anything. I see you. I see you just. What? Fadenoth. We need, oh, okay, we don't need Kathy. The portal is on Patreon. You're not at the bottom. Listen, listen, this is Kathy. This is Kathy. There's credit card numbers, Kathy. Another platform for me to make fun of Mad On. Who doesn't want that? So it is. Bring it on. But this is this is the for Fluxake fan club. This is the for the cool kids. All the insiders. For all the kids. Come on. It's not just the for a kid. Not only the cool kids support a thing. Bring it in. Bring it in. Bring it in. But seriously, that we want to keep this show going. Like we need to keep this show going. Roast needs me to talk to other people and not just her. Yes, I need, I need his outlet to talk to everybody in the podcast and not not to my ear off. That makes sense. I'll give towards that for sure. That's a good. But some other things to help us keep doing the podcast. As many of you know, we teach about glazes and clay bodies online at Seren materials workshop.com. Please now is the time. Take a class. Join us. We will change your glaze and clay body experience forever. We're going to teach about chemistry and materials and firings and conversions and every single thing you want to know. And right now, October 1st, 2025, we are launching our brand new class for everybody. From beginners to masters, it's called making glazes make sense. It's incredible, comprehensive, thousands of new glazes test to share with you. Information more than you can ever handle in our next session. Or the first, the premiere session starts on October 1st of making glazes make sense. We are thrilled with it. We have been working on this class for six or seven years. and it has finally come to fruition. And so come sign up. please again, taking our classes at SermonTrialsWorkshop.com is what helps us to keep doing this and being the best kind of stupid weekend. Keeps our research going. And keeps a ceramic key. Let's not. That's that. Okay. All right. So let's get to the reason we're here today. We have some wonderful questions to answer. Let's start out with Rebecca from Asheville, North Carolina. And Rebecca has a question for low fire pottery producer Ben. Hi, I'm Rebecca in Asheville, North Carolina. And I have a question about low fire pottery for functional work. I've always fired high fire or midfire. But recently I've gotten really curious about trying low fire. And most of my teachers or mentors I've talked to you have really tried to steer me away from it. Saying that it's not durable, it's not fully vitrified, it's going to be too fragile for functional use. I'm really inspired by historical low fire pots, like especially slipwear. And I know this kind of pottery has been used for thousands of years and so. So many cultures. So I'm just wondering if you could talk a little bit about the concerns about durability and using low fire for functional work. And maybe just a little bit about the basics of low fire. Like what is the cone range? I know some people fire up to cone one or two. When the when do you hit midfire? And what temperature do you bisk to when you're firing at a lower temperature? It also seems very mysterious to me as I know it can be porous. At a higher temperature than you're going to ultimately glaze fire. And finally about glazes. I've taken a look at bankarders, wonderful low fire glaze book. But I do have a question. I noticed that so many of the glazes contain lithium or spodgamine. And when I'm kind of looking at my budget for glazes, those materials don't usually make the cut. So I'm just curious is it an inevitability to use materials like that? I'm guessing they help to lower the temperature, the melting temperature of the glaze. But are there alternatives? And is there a reason that that ingredient lithium is showing up so consistently in those glazes? Okay, I'm excited to hear you talk about this. Hopefully and thanks for the show. I learned so much. Thank you. Okay, before you jump into this, this is like one of my biggest pet peeves is when people talk about a lack of durability with low fire clay. It's to have you been to a museum. I mean, yeah, there's some cracked ones. Sure. But let's pay attention to the ones that actually stayed together. That's incredible. And not thousands of years, tens of thousands of years. It's incredible. We just went to a Neolithic site in Ireland over the summer. And you know, the beaker graves that they had found, which is a later date. But you know that you were buried with a low fire beaker or kind of like a look like a solo cup really. Yeah, it did. It had like the little ones that yeah, like one piece. And it's like, yay. Okay, now take it. I'm done. I was going to set it over to Ben. I mean, this is a Ben question. You know, I mean, as well as as Rebecca says, you know, you know, we do have our wonderful producer, Ben Carter, who does have the still recently published the complete guide to low fire glazes for potters and sculptors technique recipes and inspiration for low temperature fire with big results by Ben Carter. Find that your local bookseller or your international books. Look by Ben Carter. Ben. So let's start with the range question because this is a good thing. The temperature ranges and ceramics are not necessarily arbitrary, but with low fire. They're pretty arbitrary. They totally arbitrary. It's made that up. Yeah, I had to just cut it off at cone three is being the top end and then O 20 being the bottom end now O 20 would be like historical luster wear. So think about like his spanner meresque lusters. You often see those in museums. Beautiful surfaces, but those lusters are fired like super low. And that's usually an extra firing for a lot of those just to be that low because the clay still has to be fired harder. Right. But I too one of the reasons I wrote the book is that I had teachers that just thought that low fire was like a disease. And you should avoid it at every at all turns. But then I went and studied with Linda Arbuckle who had done a lot of research at low fire. And one of the first things that she pointed out is that people's perception of terracotta at least is defined by flower pots, which are made to be porous. If you keep firing a flower pot hotter and hotter and hotter eventually it will become closer to vissification. It's never going to vitrify. But it becomes more durable. And so when she told me about this sort of principle of firing hotter to seal things up that made sense because that's ceramics in general. So for me, if you want to make low fire pots that are durable, don't listen to the ceramic manufacturers range of firing because they often pin it lower than what's actually necessary to get under two or even if you could get under 1% that is ideal. That generally happens at about cone one. And just ceramic manufacturers that are making low fire glazes the glazes mature at 06. So that's the rub. You need to fire and have glazes that can fire hot enough that the clay is getting under 1% and melting your glaze but not running off the pot. So my question for y'all and actually Matt and Rose might know this why are commercial low fire glazes pinned lower than what the is good for the clay. Good one, man. I think it's a CYA kind of situation. If you guys know CYA for friends, that's cover your butts. The A is another cover. Yeah, cover cover your buttocks. I think it's that basically is they don't want to have to deal with people calling and saying you told me to fire this and it all ran off or at all. Under fire is a huge deal because you know if they think low fire is Kono 5 and set a Kono 4. It's going to under fire if they set that temperature for a force that they set it to 06 also it's actually very, very hard to get glazes with contemporary materials that melt under Kono 8. Yeah, that is that we had a hard time. Yeah, we had a very hard time that like if you had lead as an option, you can knock those temperatures down or do some other tricky things with chemistry. And that's what our contemporary materials oh wait is your bottom. It's very hard to get a consistent melt under Kono 8. And we learned that with our with our glow in the dark glaze is that we couldn't we couldn't find a glaze that went low enough for the powder to glow and still have a good surface. Yeah, because the glow in the dark material you can't fire too hot if you fire that one too hot the material literally breaks down. It doesn't. Yeah, it doesn't. Doesn't do anything. Yeah, so the real trick with that glaze was designing a glaze that would melt at Kono 8 and we have one you can find it on our YouTube channel. But it's it's about as low as I would say I'm comfortable going. And traditionally I mean I think to some some actually manufacturers will this hot and then glaze cold. So they're vitrifying their clay first and then they're glazing it. It's a different glazing technique. It's not just dip it in and pull it out and it's going to dry. If you're firing hot and glazing low your you have to heat your wear before you glaze it so the glaze is dry. But you can accomplish low low fire that way too. You don't always have to do that because the trick with the terracotta pots has been with saying is that they're not vitrifying even if you fire them to Kono 1 or 2 or at least not fully vitrified. You still have some porosity so the glaze will stick to them. So you know the question that come up of like a lot of a lot of terracotta potters will actually bis to Kono 1 or 2 to get the clay as dense as possible. And then they'll glaze at Kono 0 4 or 0 6 or whatever because they're trying to get the glazes to melt. And so it that's perfectly fine to do it does make the clay body better because that's what I want to talk about. I think we took a left turn here. Does anyone else want to say anything positive about low temperature before I just there's some really great pottery out there that's low temperature. There is we love dense pots. We love others we have a lot of friends who are low fire potters and we're still friends early time still friends with them. their friends with me. Support your low fire potter but there's a harsh reality that we do have to confront that is part of this conversation and Rebecca already touched on a bunch of it. Why do we fire to high temperature? We fire to high temperature because of vitrification. Vitrification is making our clay body into glass. Vitrification is very important for food usage because if your clay is in vitrified it will absorb water which means you will get mold and bacteria growing in your clay which is not in your clay in your pots in your in your dinnerware which is a huge problem. The reason why we use ceramics for the stuff going into our bodies and the stuff coming out of our bodies is because it is sanitary. We want a sanitary entrance and exit from our bodies and so keeping that material sanitary which means no mold no bacteria is a big big deal and if your clay is under vitrified that is a distinct possibility. Are you talking about chamber pots? I'm talking about after dinnerware. I am talking about the porcelain throne, the number one ceramics thing that everybody in the world has in their house. Is there you know, Kathy is saying you know oh there's durability of pots going back downstairs. That is true. Like when you fire anything in ceramics up to a relatively low degree it is permanent. It is tough but it's also just essentially bisquare. Like low temperature firing is essentially just bisking and bisking clay is open in porous. So again the bacteria thing and it's tough. Like it's not that tough. Like honestly you guys like my mother who is you know, years old she could crush a bisquare with her bare hands. Like come on. Whereas vitrified wear is super tough. Now the one thing I will say is I know that people then like to bring up that Pete Pennell and pizza friend had done a study on compressive strength in terracadas and now the low fire people love to to rooster this this conversation that they did crush strength tests on terracadas and that the terracadas came out with higher crush strengths than vitrified clay. Let's be clear about what that is telling us. That is telling us nothing. Like literally nothing because crush strength is not relevant because vitrification is glass and glass is not particularly strong under those tensile loads that you're going to get from a test from there and terracadas are not vitrified which does mean that they will have a higher crush strength but that does not mean that they are inherently as functional. If that was the dominant factor then everybody would be working in terracada but there's a reason why for functionality that we do need vitrification and it is a really big deal and I mean I think potters like Ben and all of our friends will do things like biscuit high and then glazing low to get it as tough as possible. But yeah I mean there's a huge tradition of it. I'm not like trying to like neg on like the historical traditions those are very important. I'm not trying to neg on the artistic traditions those are very important but when we are talking about functionality there are some considerations as to why those are an issue. And so that's Matt the Bomber for today. Is everybody sad now? I am totally. Well I wanted to make a comparison though because when I was writing the book I was talking Matt about these things about balancing sort of aesthetic values versus functional values and I didn't put this in the book I thought about it but I didn't write it down which was that if you think about the car example so we all remember the 90s let's hear it back to the 90s when we were much in the cells. I know I was so high there in the 90s and guys. Maybe you don't remember the 90s but you'll remember the volvos from the 90s. So in the 90s they were doing all these studies about how the Volvo was the safest car. It was the most durable car didn't break down ran forever. In fact I still see those same volvos on the roads now from the 90s. Well the Volvo is the equivalent of the vitrified clay like it is safe it is beautiful if you like it but if you don't want a 90s Volvo then what? That's the problem like if you want to throw it into exactly you can get a 70s car. But I think what the example does for me is shows that if aesthetics is your main concern then you'll have to sacrifice you'll have to think about functionality in a different way and if functionality is your main concern then you need to think about aesthetics in a different way. And one of the people that I think rads that line in the low fire range really well this Paul Eschelman do you guys know who he is? Yeah he makes these beautiful pots and when I talk to him about this question he's like well I fired a cone 4 because it cone 4 I have a fully vitrified terracada body but what the downside of that is if you fire a little bit hotter than cone 4 that same terracotta will start to bloat and get all kinds of weird. So he literally has figured out over you know 40 years of being a potter exactly the line of what his aesthetic and functional balance is so I have one more question Matt. So why does terracotta go all the hell above cone 4? Like why is that the point where everything the chaos reigns? Well even to jump back to something that you had said earlier about terracotta not vitrified you 100% can vitrified terracotta. A lot of people don't like its look because it goes from the brick or red to brown and that's the problem is that when you form glass it just ends up looking brown so there's that consideration. But the cone 4 that's super smart on his part because cone 4 is the issue. The problem is iron. Iron's form in our clay bodies is generally FE203 which is what most people know is red iron oxide and literally that's rust it's just fancy rust. The problem is red iron oxide goes through what we call thermal decomposition and that is at a certain temperature it starts to break down the FE203 and it gives off excess oxygen it's got extra oxygen in that molecule that literally they just go away. It doesn't mean some special chemical reaction it's just you get it hot enough and that just happens. You know what temperature that happens at cone 4 is when it starts and when you go over it. So two things happen as a result. One you're now releasing oxygen into a body that is vitrifying and one thing to be clear is is that gases cannot pass through glass. It is physically impossible it violates the laws of physics. So they're trapped inside this this glassy body and then they swell and that's what bloat is. Then the other problem is that when it gives up that oxygen it actually converts into a different form of iron which is for not getting too deep into the nursery it's basically twice as powerful and so one iron molecule actually turns into two iron molecules and so then the vitrification becomes much more intense and and this is always the struggle those of you been around for a long time will have heard me say many times that dark bodies are a curse upon this earth and should be banished to the pits of hell and that is because they're all people. That's leave it at that. Yeah right. Hey Clay Company sponsor us. Seriously people harass your Clay Companies. We'll do them good. We need sponsors. We talk a lot about this in the Clay Class too. Yes our Clay bodies laws about this. This is foundational to the Clay Class because everybody's always looking for the magic firing that'll make their brown clay red clay black clay not bloat. It's never gonna happen. Folks it will never happen. The best thing that you can do is maximize your composition and fire in reduction because in reduction flames the oxygen is stolen early in the firing so it's not there to be released into bloat but that iron decomposition just happens. It turns on like a switch starting at cone four and then it just it just goes to hell and so you can vitrify. We deal with people all the time that have very vitrified clays and they'll boom stop at cone four and then it's beautiful and that sort of back to Rebecca's question about like where is the line? I mean I'd say that that's the line but it as Ben said they're just made up terms high fire low fire. It's really question of vitrified versus un vitrified and you know that that's really the distinction. Today's episode is brought to you by the Rosenfield Collection of Functional Ceramic Art. The collection exists as an online source for research and inspiration featuring photos of thousands of objects made by over 800 artists. The images are high quality and can be used with no permission required. To find out more visit www.Rosenfield Collection.com. Glazes don't make sense but that's why Rosenyer here at Serant Materials Workshop.com helping translate glazes for real ceramicists like you. So join us for our brand new class starting October. first. For everyone from beginners to masters, we clear up all the mysteries of glazes to make them work for you. Join us at ceramicurialsworkshop.com for making glazes. Makes sense. All right, I'm cutting you all off. We're going on. I know you could keep going. I know that. Okay, so everyone, we're going to go on to our next question. We have Stephen Brown from the UK called in and asked about his future pug mill purchase. Avaly Flux said it's Stephen Hewifitcher in the UK. My question is about the air clay. Last year I did a course and I noticed the clay was really nice to run. I spoke to the instructor about it and he mentioned it being de-aird. So I was just wondering whether you could talk to me a little bit and explain the difference between de-aired clay and just normally wedge clay. It's only because I'm looking at buying a pug mill at the moment and I noticed that they do have de-aired and de-airing vacuum pug mills in the market but they're really expensive so I'm trying to work out what to do at the moment. So any information would be much appreciated. Thank you. I love a de-airing pug mill. Yeah, I could say if you can afford it, do it. It's an investment in your future. Yes, and your sanity. And your physical body. Yes, and your pots will thank you. Okay, Rose, I think we took care of that. Yeah, that's good. Okay. Pug mills are for babies. For little children. Oh my goodness. Come on. I am still resentful because when I was in school, was it the same way when you were in school? Rose was just a couple years behind me. They would not allow pug mills at our school. There were no pug mills. You wedged it or you got out of swish. I think I remember that too. No room for the week. And then the millennial coming and they just give them pug mills. And they're just there for everybody to pug. I had pug mills. I am not a millennial. You're a very much. I'm just spoiled. Thank you. I've never had a pug mill. You guys so. But I had giant pug mills that would put out masses of stuff and they were all de-airing. De-airing is key in industry. Yeah. Do you have pug mills at Harvard? Oh yeah. Absolutely. So we, and I've talked about this before, like we don't dry mix our clay when we buy it and then mixed. And then we dry out the slurry and we get it to a point that we can handle it and put it through a de-airing pug mill. So we're not using the mixer part of it. Because oftentimes it's a mixer and then a de-airing pug mill. We're just using the de-airing pug mill part of it. So, but it just squishes it. And I mean, is the answer to the question just a different type of compression? It's not exactly a different type of compression. What is going on is is literally the vacuum part that Steve is talking about. And that's the really big deal. So a pug mill, a mill in itself is a meant for homogenizing the particles and aligning the particles. Yeah. And in industry, they use wad mills, they call them. Those are their mills, they call that. And they're just basically there to chop it up and make it a uniform shape. Yeah. And so that's like a really rough stage past the first, like the mixer mixer and then the wad mill. Most people in art ceramics just bypass the wad mill and feed it into the pug mill. So a pug mill generally is a couple of augers and those augers have a spiral. And they are orienting the particles. And that's that whole thing that you were taught like in your first class when you're taught how to wedge. And they tell you that you're aligning the particles. That actually is 100% true. You are aligning the particles because clay particles are like playing cards and they need to stack together. And if they're, you know, if you take all your playing cards and you throw them out, you know, in the air, they're all sort of a range where random playing cards will fall flat. But clay particles will arrange randomly. So you wedge it to align them into one direction because it will improve their plasticity and their workability and all that. So that's the first thing is it's got the auger that does that. The de airing part is that you could have a pug mill that literally is just a auger. You don't have to have the de airing part. But what the de airing thing is is that they will create a two stage auger. So what happens is that it goes to the first auger and it's oriented. And then it will generally go through a shredder plate and they'll take all that clay that was oriented and they will shred it down into like fine rice, like little, little nodules. And it'll do that in a vacuum chamber. So the vacuum chamber will suck the air out of that compartment. So literally there's no air bubbles inside that clay. And then after it goes through the vacuum chamber, it goes through a second auger stage to reoriented again. So it is important to have the two stages because although you're orienting it and then deorienting it because all the little rice particles are oriented, it becomes much more homogenized when it goes through the second stage. And then they'll often compress it down. So it'll go from a larger diameter to smaller and that just helps with the compression and the augering and all that. But taking that air out, that's no joke. Like I mean, how many of us have suffered through throwing clay and you know, you get down and you open it up and you're pulling up the wall and there's that air bubble like that sucks. And it doesn't it doesn't look professional and it'll throw up. Ben's already got the head nod. I can tell Ben's a potter because he's got the bubble head nod, right? When you're throwing and you see that bubble or it's slightly off center and you start nodding. But yeah, like de-airing is totally worth it and wedging sucks. You know, yeah, wedging's hard on your body. Oh, so hard for all the concern that people have about like how they're positioning cells when throwing man, the stress of wedging on your wrists, on your arms, on your back, really bringing up like things like the carpal tunneled issues that a lot of sramis to suffer from, I suffer from. Yeah, having a pug mill, amazing, having a de-airing pug mill like chef's kiss, worth of money. Yeah, definitely. Well, excellent. I think we took care of that fabulous. All right. So let's move on to our next question. And this question comes from Luke from Pittsburgh, PA, and Luke wrote in and asked about what defines a porcelainious clay? Does B mix from Laguna fall into this category? And so that's a question. And I can tell you from experience that for a long time, I thought it sounded sexier for me to say that I use porcelainious clay. I am not so big that I'm not afraid to admit that. But it's it's white stoneware. It's really what it is. That's Kathy likes to feel sexy. And we all try to do. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's not a thing, you guys. You know what? In fact, I've been around so long. I may have started it. You did it. Oh, man. Oh, man, she's a typhoid Mary of porcelainious stoneware. Trade, Mark. Trade, Mark. I feel like Kathy. Oh, there. We need merciless. Kathy. Yeah. Porcelainious. Thank God. I've been educating for 25 years. That's great. All the lives I've touched with all this information. Yeah, it starts in Boston. And then it goes out. Spiders out. Yeah, it's just trying to sound fancier than it is. Kathy already called it's white stoneware. The specific definition is that porcelain technically should be translucent and white and to keep things translucent, you put less caillan in it. Caillan is the molecule that makes clay bodies, clay bodies. And so porcelain, they have less caillan. Stonewares don't need to be translucent. And so they have more caillan in them because the caillan will kill translucency. So, you know, the definition between a stone or a porcelain is the total clay content in the color and the translucency. So it's porcelain is white and translucent as low caillan content. Stoneware is higher caillan content doesn't have translucency and is not white. So yeah, it's just white stoneware because you increase the total caillan content, which makes it slightly more workable. But you kill the translucency. But technically it falls under the definition of a stoneware. And honestly, the word porcelainious just makes me feel uncomfortable. It's one of those words that people don't like like moist. I can't see that. I can't see that. Well, that is all the time we have for today. But again, thanking everybody listening for your support. And I hope we get to see you on Patreon. Join us on Patreon. Yeah. Or be square. Or be square. Good. Good one. Rose. Okay. Bye, Matt and Rose. Bye, candy. Well, folks, that's it for this week's episode of For Flux Sake. I'd like to thank the listeners who submitted questions this week. And if you want your question answered on the show, shoot us an email at For Flux Sake. FluxSake [email protected]. So join us next time and when in your studio, remember what Rose always says. - Always remember to test test test. (upbeat music) - This is a test of the emergency glazed system. Beep.