Glen Lucas puts something on his first turning of bowls that appears to look like Gesso and then stacks them for drying with little other than sticks between the stacked blanks. I have not got even a tiny clue what he uses.
He explained it in Kansas City. As he tried to describe this British product, the room's consensus is that the U.S. version of this is Elmer's School Glue. I've started doing this myself. I was using wax on my rough-turned bowls. Now, I just use a 50% diluted mix of Elmer's that I buy in gallon jugs (for very little on Amazon). It's easy and seems to seal well. Much less work than melting wax and burning the daylights out of myself.