Pottery Clay Hand Stretching Tips

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 slab pottery using slabs of clay instead of forming it with your hands. She will include several examples of natural patterns 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 tricks for scoring edges of clay, attaching them and even how to apply a fun technique called slip. Take a look at these great videos and go play in the mud!

Video Transcript

"One method of making things in clay is to use slabs to build your project. There's a couple of different ways to prepare your slab, to make, for slab building. But either of the ways that you're going to do that, the first step is going to be to take your wire tool and cut a piece of your clay. Pretty even thickness is helpful; it makes it easier to get to the finished product that you're looking for. The first thing you've got to do, for making a slab, whether you're going to run it through a slab roller or whether you're going to use a rolling pin, is to stretch it out by hand. You're going to throw this piece of clay out onto the table, kind of like a pizza dough, to stretch it out. The more evenly you can get this to hit the table, the better you're slab is going to be to start. You also want to tap the edge every time or the edge will get really thin. So now, once you have this, you can go to one of the two methods for thinning out the slab."