How to Make a Spiral in Pottery

From relaxing hobby to creative profession, forming pottery has a lot to offer both amateur and professional sculptors. But not all pottery pieces are created equal. It's the details that give a bowl, pot or cup its individuality and attitude. The details and personal touches you can give to a piece are limited only by your imagination. A popular touch to add to any piece is a spiral, and it's a flexible detail that can be adapted to almost anything that comes off the pottery wheel.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Pot or bowl under construction
• Pottery wheel
• A confident touch

1. 
   Upper edge is carving surface.

   Find or make the right tool. The exact size, shape and composition of the tool is unimportant. What is important is the angle and thickness of the curved surface that you will use to shape the spiral (top edge of tool in picture). The tool pictured is an excellent choice for the outside of any size bowl or cup, or the inside of a large cup or a bowl ten inches wide or larger. For smaller bowls, or different jobs altogether, a different tool may be required. Just remember that a gently curving, smooth surface is required to form a proper spiral. Different angles and thickness on a tool will result in different variations in the "waves" of your spiral.

2. Smooth the area that will receive the spiral. You can use the tool that you intend to create the spiral to smooth the spiral area prior to creating the spiral. As you turn the piece, make slow even strokes along the its surface. Don't move your hand in straight lines. Rather, move your hand at an even height relative to the curvature of the piece. An even hand is required to properly smooth the area. Remember that you can't move too slow when smoothing, but you can move too fast.

3. Visualize your spiral. A confident touch is required to make a spiral. Unlike smoothing the area, you can't move too fast when creating a spiral. The faster you make stroke, the more space there will be between the "coils" of the spiral. However, a stroke that is too slow will result in the coils of a spiral overlapping one another. This could be used to create other effects, it just won't be a spiral. Knowing how you want your spiral to look will help steady your hand once you begin to form the spiral.

4. 
   Smooth, even stroke.

   Form the spiral. Forming the spiral is very similar to smoothing the area before forming the spiral. As the piece spins on the pottery wheel, make a steady mark in a direction that is perpendicular to the direction of the spinning, from the center of a bowl to the outside edge of a bowl. The most important thing to remember is that a spiral cannot be formed too slowly. You must form the entire spiral in one pass, or else re-smooth the area and try again. A consistent depth, width and tightness will always look good, but nobody can tell you how to make the perfect spiral. Sometimes disparities in a spiral can compliment the overall look of a piece nicely.

5. Correct imperfections as necessary. Even if your spiral is riddled with "imperfections," you may or may not need to correct them, depending on the overall look and feel you are seeking for your piece. If imperfections are many and large, you may consider simply re-smoothing and starting your spiral again. Smaller imperfections can be smoothed out by hand after the piece is removed from the wheel but before the piece is fired.

Resources

• Spiral demonstration video