How to Make Pottery Bowls

Series Summary

People have been making pottery bowls, figures and other clay ware for centuries. Pottery vessels created to carry food or water date back as far as 10,000 BCE in Japan and North Africa, and were originally hand built and fired in bonfires. The potter's wheel was developed around 6,000 BCE in Mesopotamia and completely revolutionized pottery production. Made from sand, grit, crushed shell or other crushed vessels, pottery clay could be be molded by adding water. Clay bowls, cups, plates and vases are then fired in a kiln to create a permanent change in the clay, increasing strength, and hardness.

In this free video series, our expert will demonstrate how to make pottery bowl forms. Throwing bowls on a pottery wheel is a wonderful and creative art form that produces useful household items. Let our expert show you how to wedge the clay for large and small pottery bowls, how to form the bowl, and how to trim a foot. This video art lesson is great for beginner potters who want to learn how to make beautiful pottery bowls on a potter's wheel.

Video Transcript

"Today we are going to be talking about bowls. I have a few different bowls here to show you we would start with the really small bowl which I call a dipping dish and the dipping dish is use for salsa or whatever you know chips and salsa. We are going to be talking about how to make this bowl from start to finish how to make a range foot, how to trim it on and we are not going to go into the glazing we are going just going to deal with pottery making today and not glazing. So I have the small bowl, the small salad bowl. You can see I have 2-3 glazes on this one we are going to be dealing with the foot. We are also going to be dealing with the rim and how to make the rim have some movement to it. Then we have a really large bowl this bowl is used for salad and what ever. Again the foot a beautiful glaze on the outside and the softness of the rim we would be dealing with the softness of the rim. "