If you are going to fire work, you will need various items of small equipment for glazing. Bowls and jugs are necessary— enamel jugs and bowls from Woolworth's and throw-outs from the school canteen are excellent for the job. Sieves will be needed—a fine one with a mesh of about 120 squares to the inch, and a coarse one with about 60 squares to the inch, at least. These are best bought from pottery suppliers and are usually listed in their catalogues as "lawns". You will also need sponges and brushes, both the kind used for painting and the kind sold by the pottery suppliers for "brushing slip through lawns". Scales and weights will be among your needs, so will a number of flat pieces of wood for use as modelling boards and to stand work on. Some plaster slabs are useful. Work or wet clay placed on a plaster slab dries very quickly, because the plaster absorbs the moisture. You can easily make these for yourself, following the instructions given in Chapter Nine. Old knives, too, are useful and help to supplement modelling tools. Knives for pottery are better if they are not too sharp. A few "bought" modelling tools are worth having, but they can be made quite easily with small pieces of wood and wire. For some work a rolling-pin is needed. A number of these can be made by sawing up a length of do welling or a broom handle. Try to include some slip trailers in your equipment. These are small tools for carrying out decoration with liquid clay, and a wide range of decoration is possible with them. Three more pieces of equipment which are good to have if you can afford them are a drying cupboard, a banding wheel and some modelling stands. The drying cupboard, which is simply what the name implies, may be easy to provide—a cupboard with hot pipes running through it or nearby. A banding wheel is a turn-table on which work can be placed for decoration—rather a luxury item this. Modelling stands are stands on which modelling can be carried out, which have the advantage of being easily turned so that work can be viewed from all angles. It goes without saying that an absolutely essential item is adequate covering for all children. One way of providing this is to collect old shirts. Men's shirts, worn back to front, make good overalls for Juniors and boys' shirts serve well for Infants.

This, then, is the equipment you need. What about materials? The first and obvious requirement is clay. Clay is usually best bought from a pottery supplier, if possible from a local source, because the cost of transporting clay is usually very high. It is certainly worth going into the question of price of clay. One famous school supplier of craft materials is marketing it at something like four times the average price, which is something which could not happen if schools were careful to look for cheaper sources. There is little to choose between grey and red clay for most school purposes. The appearance of red clay is pleasanter, I think, but it has a tendency to stain. If you are going to fire work, find out what the "biscuit" temperature of the clay is before you buy it, and make sure it is one which your kiln can reach happily. Clay which you find yourself locally is fun to use, and very valuable experience for children, but it will require a lot of preparation. You cannot really make it your main source of material. When your clay arrives, prepare one of the dustbins for it by making a wooden stand to go on the bottom of the bin. Place this on some bricks. This is to raise the clay off the bottom of the bin and to allow water to be beneath it, to help to keep it in condition. Place the clay in the bin and keep it covered, either with a cloth, which is frequently damped, or with polythene. Mark the dustbin lid with paint with a notice saying "Clay—in use" or something similar. This will not only prevent your finding apple cores and sweet papers in with the clay, but the lid so marked can always be kept on the bin from which clay is being used. As pieces of clay are scrapped, they can be put into the second bin. It does not matter whether they are hard or soft. This bin, too, should have a wooden stand at the bottom and water beneath it. There should be a layer of thick material over whatever clay is in the bin, with the ends dangling in the water. As a further protection, a sheet of polythene can be left over the top of the bin under the lid. If this is conscientiously done, your bin of scrap clay should be ready for use soon after you add the last piece of scrap, and in this way you can change easily from one bin to the other.

In addition to clay you will need glazing materials. Glazing is a science in itself and the possibilities for experiment are endless. For school purposes, however, I would suggest you start with the following materials. These are not the real raw materials of glazing, but personally I feel it is better to start with materials which are fairly foolproof and to progress to more elaborate experiments later if you are interested.

1. Made-up transparent glaze purchased from a pottery supplier. This is exactly what its name implies and it can be used over painted and decorated pots or it can be mixed with various oxides to form a great variety of colours. If you buy transparent glaze from the same supplier as you buy your clay, you will be able to use a glaze which has been developed to match the clay. This will help you to avoid many difficulties which arise when clay and glaze are not completely suited to each other.