What Is Red Earthenware?

Potter's Baking

• With a red clay mixture, a potter can spin the potter's wheel and use his hands and pottery-trimming tools to shape a mass of clay into a pot. This is just the first step. Next, the pot has to be baked at a very high temperature, such as 1,050 degrees Celsius, or 1,922 degrees Fahrenheit, to become a solid, strong earthenware vessel.

Glazing

• If the potter does not want the final finish to be natural red clay, he will apply one or more glazes. Every time a glaze is applied, the pot must be refired in the kiln at more than 1,000 degrees Celsius. The high baking temperature ensures that the glaze is a permanent finish for the red earthenware pot.

Availability

• Red earthenware pottery is made from the most common kind of clay --- red clay. This clay might occur in low mountainous regions such as Georgia and North Carolina, and in a different form in desert-like terrain such as Nevada and Arizona. If you examine the cost of making pottery in the U.S., it will be cheapest to order red clay materials.

Firing Temperature

• A red earthenware pot has a maturing temperature of approximately 1,000 to 1,180 degrees Celsius, or 1,832 to 2,156 degrees Fahrenheit, according to Mary Chappelhow, author of "Thrown Pottery Techniques Revealed." When it is fired, the red clay pot is porous. To adapt this kind of pot for kitchen purposes, you must add a glaze. Glazing gives the pot a waterproof finish and makes it hygienic, says Chappelhow.