The Process of Throwing, page 3

Here are some more photographs of my throwing process – in this case, a set of bowls:

1. a rough lump of clay on the wheel:

2. the piece is centered on the spinning wheel:

3. and a depression is made in the center, forming the beginning of the bowl shape:

4. The shape of the bowl is refined by “pulling” the walls of the vessel. This makes the bowl taller, and the walls thinner:

5. After several “pulls”, the bowl is more or less in its final shape. I like to leave a raised spiral design on the inside of the bowl, just for decoration, as can be seen in these two photos. The spirals look very pronounced when wet but will actually be quite subtle in the finished piece:

6. The set of eight bowls are allowed to dry for 2 or 3 hours, so they can be handled without deforming them:

7. The bowls are now shaped, except for their “feet” (the base of the piece, where it rests on the table). As the next series of photos show, the foot is refined by making a deep, circular groove in the rough bottom of the piece, and then trimming away clay to form a symmetrical foot that is pleasing to the eye. It gives the bowl a professional look, and also makes it lighter and easier to eat from. I like to finish off the foot by carving a spiral design into it, as seen the last photo. The spiral design is natural to the process of throwing and I use it all the time:

8. The shapes of the bowls are now complete, but I love to do surface decoration, so I’m going to put a design on this set:

9. The surface decoration begins by putting a green band around the foot with a brush. The colors in the remaining photos are all clay “slips,” which are applied to the wet class surface:

10. Then I apply large white drops of slip to the outside of the bowl. I love decorating with these raised bumps, they remind me of this candy we used to get when I was a kid, that had these colored dots of sugar on a long strip of paper. The “dots” are applied from a squeeze bottle, as you can see in the second picture:

11. The white dots are then accented with few black ones:

12.    I also made some cups to go with these bowls:

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13. Here are some pics of the finished bowls, with a clear glaze over them:

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