Video: Pottery Pitcher: Pulling Up Walls

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When shaping clay, use wet sponge to hold outside wall. Learn how to pull up the walls when throwing a clay pitcher in this free pottery lesson from ceramics expert.

- Pottery Pitcher: Mixing Slip

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Video Transcript

OK, so for throwing a pitcher. What we're going to do when we're throwing the clay up into the walls, is throw a nice straight cylinder. Which is what you often do for different projects. This gives you a nice form to then sort of sculpt and shape into whatever form you want. In this case it's going to be a pitcher. Now I'm going to pull the walls up by placing a sponge on the outside and with my finger underneath it and a finger on the inside and what I'm going to do is hold this one just above it. In the cross section I'm going to pinch the clay between my fingers. Using this sponge to moisten the clay so it doesn't grip and I'm going to pull the clay up and pull the clay through the walls of the form and I'm going to demonstrate that next. You will see what looks like a bubble of clay moving up through the walls and here we go. Start at the base grab the clay underneath there and simply start pulling it up into the walls. Again this is something that takes years and years. Well not years just a lot of practice. The more practice that you do the better you will get at it. In the beginning it will be very challenging but don't get discouraged. Here we go again and as you can see we're pulling that clay up into the walls of the form. What we want to have is nice uniform walls the same thickness all the way through. If the clay starts to get away from you take control of it as soon as you start backing off. You'll lose your form so here we go. We're going to give it one last pull. Pulling that clay up through the walls and now we have pulled the clay up through the walls of this vessel. We've got nice even walls and now it is time to start shaping our pitcher and shaping is a whole process in itself and we're going to get to that in the next part of this lesson.

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Pottery Pitcher: Pulling Up Walls

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