Forming Clay for a Pie Pan

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 video clip series this clay expert will be addressing the art of pottery forming and molding the clay with your hands. She will include several examples of natural hand movements you can use to create life in your pieces as well as several creative ideas for new and interesting designs no one has thought of yet. This will make each piece you make special and unique. You will learn tricks for scoring edges of clay, attaching them and even how to apply handles to a pouring bowl. Take a look at these great videos and go play in the mud!

Video Transcript

"So, another project that you can do on the wheel is to make a pie plate or a quesh plate or tart. This size is going to be appropriate for a pie. It's still wet. It will be shrinking a little bit in the drying process and the firing process. So, this is going to end up close to the size of a standard pie plate. A little bit deeper. And, I like to put the finger marks in the rim. It makes it really easy to make a fluted crest. You just lay the crest right in there and then you can press it right into the marks that I've already made in the pie plate. Now, you only want to bake in stoneware. You don't want to do this if you're working in earthenware. Because, it's not going to be bake ware. It will be a decorative piece if you do it in earthenware. So, I'm using about three pounds of clay for this particular project. I'm going to weight that out. So, I've got three pounds of clay there. I'm going to wedge this together a little bit. Because, I've got it in a few separate pieces. And, once you've got that wedged together just go ahead and hit it into a nice round ball. And, now we can go throw this on the wheel."