Laguna Clay · WC402
Half & Half
Equal parts white stoneware and porcelain. It is the whitest, tightest, most watertight body we sell that is not a porcelain, and members here take it places the manufacturer’s list does not go. It also comes with one firing warning you need to read before you buy it.
Twenty-five pounds. Light gray in the bag, white out of the kiln. Half white stoneware, half porcelain, in equal amounts.
Before you buy it
Is Half & Half your clay?
This is the bag for people who want porcelain results without committing to porcelain, and for people here who build big white things. It is also the one clay on our shelf with a firing caveat attached.
Buy it if
- You want white. Actually white, not cream and not off-white.
- You are making functional ware you want as watertight as it gets outside of porcelain.
- You are building large sculpture, or throwing sections and joining them into one tall piece. That is what this bag gets used for here.
- You want your glaze color to come out exactly as advertised.
- You have thrown porcelain and found it exhausting, and you want most of the reward for less of the fight.
- You have read the firing note below and you are happy to work with it.
Buy something else if
- You are brand new to the wheel. Half of this bag is porcelain and it is less forgiving than it looks.
- You want warm, earthy, iron-driven glaze results. A white body gives those nothing to work with.
- You are making practice pieces and price matters. This is $12 a bag more than 52 Buff.
- You want maximum forgiveness on a big joined piece. B-Mix w/Grog has actual grog holding it together.
- You want the absolute whitest, finest, most translucent result. That is #16 Porcelain, one shelf over.
- You would rather not think about firing temperatures at all. Read the next section and decide.
What it is best at
Where Half & Half earns its keep.
Laguna rates WC402 for ovenware, tableware, wall tile, floor tile, jewelry, and throwing and hand building at small and medium. Two of the things it gets used for most in this building are not on that list, and we have said so plainly below rather than pretending the manufacturer backs us up.
White in oxidation and 0.5% water absorption. That is the tightest stoneware body we sell, beaten only by the porcelain and the Spanish import. Mugs, bowls and plates made from this will not seep, will not stain easily, and will look like something you bought.
A genuinely white ground means nothing is tinting your glaze from below. Brights stay bright, pastels stay pale, celadons come out the celadon color. Only the porcelain does this better.
This is what our members use it for and it works, but be straight with yourself about it: Laguna’s use list for WC402 stops at medium. Their cone 10 Half & Half is rated for sculpture and large hand building, this cone 5 version is not. Good joins and even walls are doing the work here, not the clay body.
Laguna calls it a very throwable white body, and it is. It is not as effortless as plain B-Mix, because the porcelain half wants more attention and less water, but it is far kinder than throwing straight porcelain.
Wall tile and floor tile are both on the list, and the tight body makes for a hard-wearing tile. Twelve percent shrinkage is working against you on anything large and flat though, so dry it slow and dry it level.
Not the bag for your first month. Half of it is porcelain, which means it goes soft faster, punishes extra water, and asks for compression you may not have learned yet. Come back to it once your hands know what they are doing.
The nerdy part
The numbers, and what they actually mean.
These are Laguna’s published figures for WC402. Read the cone card carefully, because it is the one that matters most on this clay.
Straight answers
What is great about it, and what is not.
What it does well
- It is genuinely white.Not cream, not off-white, not warm. If the piece in your head is white, this and the porcelain are your only two options here, and this one is $4.50 cheaper and considerably easier to throw.
- It is the tightest stoneware we sell.Half a percent water absorption. For anything that holds liquid, sits in water, or lives on a dinner table, that is the number you want.
- Your glazes come out right.A white ground does not tint anything above it. Brights, pastels, celadons and crystallines all read true, and you never need a white base coat first.
- It is porcelain you can actually throw.Half porcelain gives you the whiteness and the density, and the white stoneware half gives you back the patience that straight porcelain takes away.
- Members build big things out of it here.Large sculpture and multi-section thrown pieces joined into one. That goes beyond what the manufacturer rates it for, but it is what happens in this building.
- It is lovely bare.Tight, white and smooth after sanding. A raw white surface next to a glazed one is one of the cleanest looks you can make here.
What it does badly
- Laguna says cone 5 only, because it bloats hotter.Their FAQ names this clay specifically. Bloating is a defect in the clay wall itself, not the glaze, and you cannot fix it afterward. Read the firing section before you commit a big piece.
- It is less forgiving than it looks.It reads as a friendly white stoneware and behaves like something halfway to porcelain. It softens faster under water, wants better compression, and does not tolerate being rushed.
- The manufacturer does not rate it for large.We use it for large anyway and it works, but the clay is not helping you the way a grogged body would. Your joins are carrying the piece.
- It shows every contaminant.Dark clay dust from the next table, iron off a tool, an unwashed bat. A white body records all of it as spots after firing.
- It is one of the priciest bags we carry.$40 at Green level, tied with Speckled Buff, and $12 above 52 Buff.
- It gives iron glazes nothing.Shinos, temmokus and floating glazes all borrow iron from the body underneath them. There is none here to borrow, so they come out pale and flat compared to what the same jar does on Speckled Buff.
Glazing it
A white ground tints nothing.
Every glaze chip in the studio was photographed on a light clay body. This is the lightest stoneware we sell, so what you see on the chip is about as close as this studio gets to what you will actually pull out of the kiln.
What pops on it
What fights it
Satin or glossy?
Glossy, when color accuracy is the reason you bought this bag. A gloss over a white body is the most faithful reproduction of a glaze chip available in this studio, and it is the right call inside anything you drink from because it cleans better.
Satin suits it beautifully for a softer, more modern look, particularly the pale Coyote Satins and the lighter Mayco Stoneware Mattes. Both work. This clay does not force the decision the way the warm bodies do.
Is it beautiful naked?
Yes, and it holds up unglazed better than anything else here except the porcelain. At 0.5% water absorption a bare surface is close to sealed already, so a raw foot will not darken sitting in a puddle the way 52 Buff’s does. Bare clay is fine to fire here.
Sanded smooth after firing it goes a clean matte white that looks like carved stone. Half naked is excellent on this body: a glossy glazed interior against a raw white exterior is about as crisp as pottery gets. Still glaze the inside of anything holding liquid.
Combinations worth trying
Where these came from. These pairings come from the glaze makers’ own layering guides and from what potters consistently report on white bodies. They are not photographs of a shelf of Half & Half test tiles from this studio. Fire a test tile before you commit a piece you care about, and go dig through the Glaze Bible and our glaze combination resources while you are at it.
Read this one
Laguna says fire this clay to cone 5, not cone 6.
Laguna’s own FAQ takes the exact question a studio like ours would ask, whether their clays are fine fired to cone 6 in a community kiln, and answers yes for almost everything they make. Then it names the handful of exceptions, and this clay is one of them. Their words: it should only be fired to cone 5, because it will bloat if fired hotter.
What bloating is
Blisters and bubbles that form inside the clay wall itself, not in the glaze. Gas trapped in the body has nowhere to escape once the clay has closed up, so it pushes the wall outward from the inside. It shows up as swellings, craters or a pitted surface, and unlike a glaze fault there is no fixing it afterward.
Why this clay in particular
Look at the absorption number: 0.5% at cone 5. This body is essentially fully vitrified at its rated temperature, with almost no porosity left. Push it another cone hotter and there is nowhere left to go but past vitrification, which is exactly where bloating starts.
What to do about it
Talk to an instructor before you put a piece you care about in, and say which clay it is. Thick walls and heavy sculptural sections are the most vulnerable, thin functional ware the least. If you are planning something big and irreplaceable, a test piece first is cheap insurance.
Not a reason to avoid the clay. Plenty of studios fire this body successfully and it is on our shelf because it is worth having. It is a reason to know what you are working with, which is the entire point of this page. The same warning applies to B-Mix w/Specks, and to nothing else we sell.
Keeping it alive
Half & Half in a desert.
Twelve percent shrinkage and a porcelain half means this clay behaves more like B-Mix than like a rugged stoneware. Utah air is not on your side, and neither is a body that goes tight this early.
Compress the floors and the rims
The porcelain half is the part that cracks. Rib the bottom firmly while the piece is still wet, and run a chamois over the rim before it comes off the wheel. Two habits, most of the cracks gone.
Dry it slow and dry it even
Tent the piece loosely for the first day or two, rims and handles especially. Even matters more than slow. A piece with a bone dry rim and a wet base is already cracked, it just does not know it yet.
Close the bag the second you are done
Not at the end of class. The second you cut what you need. An open bag in this climate grows a stiff skin within one session, and mixing stiff clay with soft clay in the same piece builds in a crack on purpose.
Less water on the wheel, not more
The porcelain half drinks water and goes floppy. When a wall starts feeling soft, reach for a rib and stop adding water. Let it firm up for a few minutes and it will come back.
When it has already gone hard. Beat it. Throw the block down on the ground hard a few times, turning it between throws, or slam wedge it on the table. Like the porcelains, this one takes real effort to revive, so it is worth not letting it get there in the first place.
If it is past saving on the wheel, do not bin it. Stiff clay is excellent slab mold clay and a mold does not care how hard it is. Never fight hard clay on the wheel. It is bad for your wrists, your hands and your back, and throwing is about touch, not strength. Full drying walkthrough: how to dry your pottery.
Plan it before you throw it
The Half & Half shrinkage calculator.
This clay shrinks 12% between wet and fired. On the multi-section pieces this bag gets used for, that twelve percent compounds across every part you joined, so measure before you commit.
Works for height, width or diameter. Measure the wet piece while it is still on the wheel or the table, before it starts drying.
What a bag actually buys you
Cost per piece.
A bag of clay is 25 pounds. This is one of the two most expensive stoneware bags we carry, and it is still under three dollars a mug.
These weights are studio averages for a piece thrown at a normal thickness. Heavy throwers get fewer pieces, and there is no shame in that.
Clay only. Glaze up-charges, kiln firing fees and your membership are separate.
All eight, side by side
How Half & Half stacks up.
Prices follow the level you picked in the buy box. Tap any clay to go to its own page.
| Clay | Fired color | Texture | Best at | Shrinks | Price |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 52 Buff | Warm buff tan | Slightly coarse | Mugs, bowls, tiles, hand building, slab moldsNo grog, so it slumps and cracks on anything big. | 10% | $28 |
| B-Mix w/Grog | Off white | Very fine grog | Beginners, joined pieces, bigger forms, and rakuYou can still feel the grog on a smooth rim. | 11% | $32 |
| B-Mix | Cream | Smooth, porcelain-like | Tableware, ovenware, tile, jewelry, a pleasure on the wheelWants slow drying and real compression or it cracks. | 12% | $36 |
| B-Mix w/Specks | Warm white, speckled | Smooth | Everything B-Mix does, with specks coming through the glazeSame crack risk as B-Mix, and Laguna says cone 5 only. | 12.5% | $36.50 |
| Speckled Buff | Desert tan brown, speckled | Smooth, low grit | Wheel throwing, warm earthy work, a reduction look in an electric kilnThe manganese specks burn through glaze, so pale colors will not stay pale. | 12% | $40 |
| Half & HalfYou are here | White | Smooth | Large sculpture, multi-section wheel throwing, white functional wareHalf porcelain, so it is less forgiving than it looks, and Laguna says cone 5 only. | 12% | $40 |
| #16 Porcelain | Very light gray white | Very smooth | Fine detail, carving, slab forming, true glaze colorThe highest shrinkage on the shelf, and it punishes sloppy compression. | 13.9% | $44.50 |
| Berlin Gray | Cement gray to dark gray | Impalpable grog | Throwing and modeling smooth pieces with fine detailWants to sink back down while you throw big pieces. | 12.4% | $49 |
Berlin Gray comes in a 27 lb vacuum sealed bag. Every other clay here is 25 lb.
After you buy it
How you actually get the bag.
Clay is not sitting out for anyone to grab. Once you have paid for it, a staff member goes and gets it with you, so you always leave with a fresh bag rather than the one that has been open on a shelf.
Buy it here
Pick your level, choose how many bags, and check out. The receipt lands on your phone straight away.
Show the receipt
Pull the receipt up on your phone and show it to any member of our staff. That is the whole check.
They go with you
A staff member walks back with you and hands you a fresh bag of Half & Half.
Make something white and make it big.
Porcelain color and porcelain density, with enough stoneware in it that you can still enjoy the throwing. Read the firing note, talk to an instructor about anything major, and then go build the thing you have been picturing.