Secret Garden Pottery

About the Images

The term leather hard refers to teh stage clay reaches before becoming bone dry, stiff enough to support itself, but still can be altered.

Engobes are liquid clays colored with metalic earth oxides or glaze stains applied to wet or leather-hard pottery for decoration; also natural clays of different colors applied on raw ware for decoration.  Engobe can be covered by glaze of used alone. 

A stain is essentially an oxide that has been fired then ground to 200 mesh powder.  Stains colors tend to be more stable since they have been fired already the color of the stain fired is identical to the raw color.