Throwing Bowls on the Potter's Wheel

Series Summary

Ceramics, the craft of forming pottery, is over twelve thousand years old, pottery appearing in the tenth millennium before the Birth of Christ. The potter's wheel was invented between the 6th and 2nd millenniums B.C. in Mesopotamia and completely changed pottery production, allowing pottery to be created much faster and more uniform in shape. Bowls are the most common creations formed on the potter's wheel. Learn how to throw clay bowls on the pottery wheel in this free ceramics video series featuring artist and ceramics consultant Jeff Zamek. Zamek will demonstrate how to wedge clay on the pottery wheel, how to apply hand pressure to center clay on the potter's wheel, how to open clay on the wheel, how to form the bottom of a bowl on the potter's wheel, how to shape a bowl on the wheel, how to form the lip of a bowl on the pottery wheel, how to remove excess water from a bowl on the wheel, how to trim the bottom of a bowl on the wheel, how to use potter's ribs to shape bowls on the wheel, and how to trim excess clay off a bowl.

Video Transcript

"Throwing bowls on the potter's wheel is one of the most common forms that are accomplished. In a sense you are really working with the centrifugal force of the wheel throwing the clay out and what you are doing is just manipulating the clay to the right shape and the right dimension so it is an exciting form to do on the wheel and you can do a lot of bowls in a very short period of time just by using the force of the wheel and a little bit of control technique. Using different size pieces of clay will yield different size bowls on the wheel. There are a few tools that you can use to facilitate that and one of them being the sponge, the wooden tool, the needle tool, and the sponge on a stick. Another important part of using clay on the wheel is the right moisture content, too hard and the piece will be hard to form, too soft and the piece will collapse."