What is a Squishy Pot?

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 pottery 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. A ceramics artist can use the potter's wheel to throw many different types of ceramic squishy pots, vases, pots, and bowls. See how to make decorative pots on the pottery wheel in this free ceramics video series featuring artist Chris Cook. Chris will demonstrate how to wedge clay, how to center clay before throwing on the wheel, how to open clay when throwing on the wheel, how to gauge the thickness of a pot when throwing on the potter's wheel, how to throw to desired height on the wheel, how to dry throw on the wheel, and how to add designs to a decorative pot.

Video Transcript

"Alright, now we're going to make some fun pieces here. And this is, this is something that I learned from my professor and it's just fun to make and it gives a great, they give a great surface for decorating. That's all it is is just a, we're going to throw a form, just a basic form, basic cylinder, a large cylinder, and then we're going to squish it in on either side, and it's going to make the pot look like that. And, it will give us one surface on this side and one surface on this side for decorations for when we go and glaze it and stuff. Gives it a nice palette to paint on to stay. And you can make them, you can make them this big or you can make them this big, however. For this demo, we'll go, I think this should be a fair enough amount of clay, and that's going to make it, not very big. But, generally, I like to make these pots about that big, nice squish on it, but there's no need to do that now just for a simple demo. Alright, so you want to get your nice piece of clay sorted out, about the right size and we want to go and wedge this, make sure it's all nice and free of air bubbles."