Burnishing

Burnishing takes time and patience. Take off your watch. Make yourself comfortable. Have your tools close at hand. I use spoons of different shapes and sizes, smooth rocks, pieces of copper pipe, and metal ribs (thin, flexible, kidney-shaped pieces metal). If I’ve thrown the pot on the wheel I do the first burnishing by securing it back onto the wheel with pads of soft clay and holding a flexible metal rib against it as it spins around. For handbuilt pots and for a second burnish on thrown pots, I hold the pot in my hands and turn it every which way so that I can see whether the shine is consistent on all surfaces. Then I use whichever tool fits the curve of the pot and rub, rub, rub, to obtain a consistent shine. Be gentle and try not to make ridges between strokes. The best time to burnish is when the pot is a dry leatherhard (leatherhard is when the clay feels and looks like leather) and it’s a good idea to make pots that don’t have any little nooks and crannies that your burnishing tools can’t get into. Sometimes I burnish the bare clay and sometimes I paint the pot first with a coloured slip (fluid clay) and then burnish it, but the slip must be allowed to dry to leatherhard or else it will just rub off the pot. On a warm day I like to sit on a stool outside the studio with my back against the wall and cradle the pot on a soft towel on my lap; on cold or rainy days I like to sit beside the window and listen to the radio turned on low. I finish off a burnished pot by rubbing it with my hands to smooth any lines left by the edges of the burnishing tools so that by the end of the process the pot feels like one of my babies. After the pot is fired the surface will be smooth and shiny, even though no glaze is used.