Throwing a Japanese Bowl from the Hump

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; however, individual potters can mix their own clay or dig it from the ground and focus more on the art and beauty aspects of creating ceramic pottery. Each artist has his or her own style and focus. Throwing traditional Japanese rice bowls and tea bowls is a prerogative of ceramic artist Chris Cook. Watch how to throw traditional Japanese bowls on the wheel in this free video series featuring artist Chris Cook. Chris will give you unique design tips for creating traditional Japanese rice bowls and tea bowls. Watch as he demonstrates how to open the clay on the hump, how to use ceramic tools to trim your bowls, how to pull Japanese tea bowls on the hump, how to create a clay chuck, and how to trim the foot on a bowl on the wheel.

Video Transcript

"Alright now that we have got our hump and it's still centered I am just going to keep on throwing. So now we are going to move on to the classic Japanese rice bowl and this is where throwing from the hump and it came from this high production very fast method of throwing utilitarian objects for every day use and when you throw off the hump in this method it's really good for your body it's a lot more efficient and streamlined than the say the American version of production. For some reason the Japanese have got it down. They have been doing it for thousands of years longer that us so. I am going to take this, center it up again with a nice wheel wedge and you're going to establish how much clay you want to use. So for one of these bowls we are going to use maybe about a pound and I can tell you right there that's about a pound."