About Me  | Most Recent Posts SO, what exactly goes on with the wheel?Posted Jul-16-08 15:47:54 PDT A lot of people think that working with a pottery wheel is simple. Well, let me dispel that illusion right now. No, my friends, it is anything BUT simple. It's not just pushing clay around with your hands. Well, it is in a way, but that pushing has to be taught. You can't just dive onto a wheel and expect to have something come out of it. Those artisans that you see making amazing pots in giant studios? They've been doing that for years, and are infinitely better than I for it. It's a learned art, and you're either good at it or you're not. I like to think I'm good at it. I learned the wheel in an Advanced Clay class in High School. Helped by one of the coolest art teachers ever, we (my class and I) struggled to make something worth firing on these massive contraptions with spinning disks on them called pottery wheels. Many people got frustrated and gave up. Other people seemed to have a natural knack for it. I was sort of in between, my first few pots didn't even make it off the runway (exploded in the hangar you might say). But I kept on trying, and eventually managed to get a little urn and vase that I considered worth firing. The urn is still one of my favorite pieces I've ever made. The vase is okay...I don't like the glaze. Anyhow, the basic process to throwing (making something on the wheel. Don't ask why it's called that, no one knows) is this: You slap a ball of clay down in the general center of your bat (the disk covering the metal wheel), you wet your hands, and dive in. Then you fight off-centered clay, get it as close to centered as possible by alternating making a tall cone and pressing this cone back down, and then start forming your pot. When you've got a relatively bowl-shaped lump of clay that is (hopefully) centered, you start something called pulling, i.e. slowly moving your hands up the walls of the pot/bowl until you reach the top. This smooths the inside and outside of the pot. Then, when you're done with that, you stop the wheel, take the bat off, and wait for your pot to dry. This usually takes overnight. Then, you cut the pot off the bat, as close to the bottom as possible, and proceed to Trim the pot. Trimming is an art all its own. It involves flipping the pot upside down, holding it to the wheel in some way (I prefer a contraption called the Griffin Grip, which uses a mechanical system to hold it, others prefer using a bat and lumps of clay), and then shaving clay off the pot where you see fit. the main reason to trim is to cut a foot, that is the bottom of the pot. you rarely see perfectly-rounded bottoms of pots; they almost always have a ring of clay around the edge. Why? Simple: during firing, the clay shrinks, which involves motion. A rounded bottom will shrink slightly unevenly, and potentially cause the pot to tip over, damaging other pieces or even worse, your kiln. A foot prevents this. Generally, an elegant, deep foot is a sign of a good potter. I think this isn't always true, a deep foot can mean you were cowardly when you pulled your pot and didn't want the foot to explode during firing. Then, after you've trimmed the foot and pot, you wait for it to dry and fire it. Oh, and generally you work on other pieces in the meantime. I hope this gives you a good insight into the work that goes into a pot...Stay tuned for more detail at a later date, right now I'm going to make some more pots. Ciao! |
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