Throwing a Bottle on the Pottery 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. Today, in the twenty-first century, pottery is produced on a large scale; consequently, individual potters focus more on the art and beauty aspects of creating ceramic pottery. Bottles are challenging to throw on the pottery wheel, as they require the correct series of formation elements. Learn how to throw clay bottles on the pottery wheel in this free ceramics video featuring ceramics artist and consultant Jeff Zamek. Zamek will demonstrate how to wedge clay on the potter's wheel, how to center clay on the pottery wheel, how to center clay to the right diameter, how to pull a cylinder on the pottery wheel, how to wet clay on the potter's wheel, how to form a cone on the pottery wheel, how to form the neck of a bottle on the pottery wheel, and how to remove excess water from clay vessel on the wheel.

Video Transcript

"The bottle form is one of the most interesting forms to accomplish on the wheel in that it contains a few elements that have to be put together in the right order; aside from centering the initial lump of clay on the wheel head and throwing a cone shape, then the next step is developing the curve of the bottle on the shoulders and the bottle neck itself. Periodically a challenging part of throwing the bottle is taking the water out of the interior of the form and then completing the form. In a sense the neck of the bottle and the lip of the bottle has to be completed about 2/3rds of the way through the process not at the end of the process. There are many different variations on bottle shapes on the wheel and it really depends on the ingenuity of the potter, and the experience of the potter to utilize these different elements in the appropriate aesthetic and functional form."