How To Make A Ceramic Bowl By Hand

To make a pinch pot one inserts a thumb into a ball of clay and continually pinches the the clay between the thumb and fingers while rotating to thin.

How to make a ceramic bowl by hand.

If you want to make pottery decide on which item you re going to make before choosing an appropriate clay such as low fire clay. Or maybe you re not quite accomplished enough at the wheel to do it. How to hand build serving bowls did you ever wish you could make a large serving bowl but don t have a pottery wheel. Start at the base of the bowl and gently push out and up maintaining the shape of the bowl.

Well maybe it s time for you to consider hand building one. Handbuilding is an ancient pottery making technique that involves creating forms without a pottery wheel using the hands fingers and simple tools. You want the sides to be about 1 4 inch thick. However if you re creating a smaller object pinch the clay by hand between your thumb and forefinger to form the shape you require.

Now you have a bowl but more than likely it is too thick to be a good bowl. Not only does ceramic mold making enable you to repeat a form over and over again it also makes individual forms lose their preciousness which frees you up to experiment more. In this video i will show you how to do clay bowl using the score and slip method without a pottery wheel as well as finishing steps using a clay sponge t. Ceramic mold making opens up endless potential for creative expression.

The most common handbuilding techniques are pinch pottery coil building and slab building.