Pottery Pitcher: Entering & Opening the Form

Video Transcript

"Okay, so we're throwing a pitcher, and as you can see, we have centered the clay, and the next step in this process is going to be to enter the clay and open the form. I'm just flattening out the top here, using the side of my hand to flatten out the centered lump of clay. Now I'm going to enter the form. Some people like to do this with a finger. They look for the center so they they support the finger with a different hand, and enter the form like this. I like to enter it with my hands on the side, and I've got my arms in a stable position here, and I'm going to find the center of the clay with my thumbs, and then I'm just going to push in. I'm going to put some water in there, and then I'm going to push all the way down inside. Okay, so now depending on the the size of the foot that you want on the base of the pot, you're going to want to enter, and for for this one, I'm going to leave about a half an inch of clay on the bottom. And this is a matter of feel. What I'm doing is I'm judging how far my thumbs are going down based on these fingers here. And I've got them on the outside on the wheel, and I'm just kind of judging, okay, that feels about right. Now this is this is like most things in ceramics, an issue of feel. Okay, now I'm going to open the form, and I'm going to do this by using what's called the claw. And this is forming your hand in this kind of a shape and clawing the pot. And what I'm doing when I'm doing this is I'm forming the inside of the finished vessel, and I'm actually opening the clay, and I'm pulling it towards me, and pushing it down at the same time. You can see how that clay is opening up for me, and I'm forming the inside of the pitcher. So, if you want your the base of your pitcher to be nice and flat, you'll want to do that now. Using my fingers to hook in there as well. Okay, so now I have entered and opened the form that we're going to use to throw this pitcher, and the next step is pulling the clay up into the walls, and I'm going to demonstrate that in the next section."