Making Clay Coils by Hand

Series Summary

Making pottery is the art of creating earthenware vessels from clay. The process involves shaping a vessel, by hand or with tools, and cooking it in a kiln. Mankind has been making pottery since the times we first learned about fire. Ancient civilizations used pottery for all sorts of things, from storing oil, wine, and other foodstuffs, to holding papyrus scrolls, the organs of dead god-kings, perfumes, and various religious offerings. Because pottery is durable and lasts long after its creator is gone, it has helped us to learn about entire groups of people that we might have otherwise never known; these hand-crafted objects tell stories, not only from their complex structural designs, but also the carefully wrought stories painted on their surfaces, a sort of iconography of a time and place in history.

In this free video clip series this clay expert will be addressing the art of pottery forming and molding the clay with your hands. She will include several examples of natural hand movements you can use to create life in your pieces as well as several creative ideas for new and interesting designs no one has thought of yet. This will make each piece you make special and unique. You will learn the art of coil making using pulls, pinches and more. Take a look at these great videos and go play in the mud!

Video Transcript

"So, I'm going to talk right now about a very basic method of construction in clay and that is coil building. It's a very simple method where you just take some clay and then you're just going to make snakes. Make coils. You can do these by hand. And, I'm also going to show you how to do them using the extruder. If your coils that you're rolling by hand are not quite round, you can just pat them and work on them. But, basically for coil building we're going to need a turntable. You're going to need a wooden knife. Some sort of scoring tool or a needle tool. Some kind of wooden paddle to pat the clay with and your water bucket. Now, I'm just going to finish rolling out one of these coils by hand. And, show you that if you go slowly and smoothly you'll end up with a very even consistent round coil. And, we can use these to construct a variety of different things. Now, like I said you can roll these all out by hand or you can do them using an extruder. Which, I like to do because then you end up with a lot of very consistent coils. And, you can use them to build things that are very tall. If you can't, if you don't have the throwing capabilities yet you can make pieces that are just as tall and beautiful and smooth as thrown pieces using coils. And, I'm going to show you how to do that."