How to Choose a Pottery Design

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 art video series, learn how to make wheel thrown clay pottery. Our expert will give you step-by-step instructions to make your own pottery, including basic wheel techniques like mounting the clay, shaping it and creating the opening as well as an explanation of the stages, painting, and final firing of your piece in a kiln. These beginner pottery videos will help you discover the art that people have been practicing since time immemorial.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Nipa Banerjee from Arts Space India I'm talking on behalf of Expert Village. Now I'm going to show you different designs of cups and saucers. See there are different designs of cups here and saucers are important part of a cup. This is a smaller one and this is a little bit bigger. The lower part is metal and here the broad enough and now we can show you a coffee mug there are rings, there are some different designs and the handle so this cup is flat it is a different type. We have different types of coffee mugs also one mug is here it is actually a flat one and we dent the upper portion and made it a different shape. We have a glass type shape see there is no handle on it, it is like a little pot and see and this is the orange one. See the difference this is a white body that is called stoneware and this oven ware it is slightly reddish. We have one more design STOPPED HERE STILL NEED MORE......."