Using an Electric Wheel & Kick Wheel

Series Summary

Millions of people all over the world use pottery everyday for a multitude of tasks. Of course this is nothing new. Mankind has used earthenware, baked and hardened in fire, for millennia. True though it is that these days pottery is mass produced, it is the prerogative of the ceramic artist to create unique pottery art and cultivate skills necessary to do so. If you would like to learn how to make pottery, or hone your ceramic skill to create original works of art, you can learn for free online from one of our experts.

In this free online video series, learn how to make pottery, from ceramics expert Betty Ingham. She will demonstrate important ceramics techniques such as how to throw on the potter's wheel - learn how to center, open, and form clay on the potter's wheel. She will also demonstrate how to use molds to create pottery such as serving trays. This pottery expert will give you tips on how to decorate greenware pottery using techniques such as scraffito and chattering. Additionally she will show you how to dry pottery, how to create agateware, how to prepare greenware pottery for the kiln, how to wax bisqueware, and how to glaze bisque pottery once it has been pulled from the kiln.

Video Transcript

"Hi I'm Betty Ingham my husband Ben and I have our own business called the Harry Potters and we make potter and I'm speaking today on behalf of Expert Village. As you know the wheel was invited 1000s of years ago the potters wheel originated many many years ago and before electricity we had what we called a kick wheel. As you can see I'm kicking the bottom of it and that makes the top go around. This is very hard work so we have involved from the kick wheel to a electric wheel where we do most of our work. You do have a lot of control in this but if you are starting out it is much easier to work off of but the electric wheel is so much more efficient and faster. But we do mostly all of our work on the electric wheel."