Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
This method of trimming feels like it has become so specific to my practice. It’s a tricky process, I can’t sugarcoat it and it isn’t a technique I’d ever teach if I was in a class-setting, showing a group of beginners how to turn bowls.
There’s a complexity that arises when attempting to make a shape that has a contrasting form on the interior and exterior, as it isn’t a shape you can simply throw unless you spend a lot of time blasting the inside shape with a heat gun in order to firm it up, just so you can then alter the outside walls. Thus, isn’t it simply easier to wait and do all of that at the turning stage, after the clay has changed into a drier, leather hard state.
This, combined with very thin walls and extraordinarily tall foot-ring, that’s trimmed hollow, makes for a piece that is, I think, deceptively difficult to execute. I sometimes worry that by showing these very specific techniques that beginners might feel as if this is the “correct” way of trimming work, and whilst there is no right or wrong way, there are certainly easier and harder approaches and this, well, I reckon on it’s the trickier side of things.
I turn the pot with its form upright, as it allows me to feel the cross section of the vessel as I trim, this is something you can’t do if the bowl is placed upside-down, base pointing up, like they normally are then trimmed. The thing is, for these contrasting forms, it’s absurdly helpful, as I can run my fingers over the walls, inside and out, to feel where those thicknesses are, especially where the angles change direction.
There are other difficulties, such as pinning the pot down via a skim of slip and trimming a foot that’s as deep as these often have. Of course, you could potentially throw a foot of this size, yet I prefer to make them as one, single block of clay, as it just means drying them out thereafter isn’t as complex as compared to drying out an assemblage that’s created from two pieces.
I could write about this specific shape for hours, which I hope demonstrates just how much space in occupies in my mind.
#craft #clay #handmade #bowl #satisfying
This method of trimming feels like it has become so specific to my practice. It’s a tricky process, I can’t sugarcoat it and it isn’t a technique I’d ever teach if I was in a class-setting, showing a group of beginners how to turn bowls.
There’s a complexity that arises when attempting to make a shape that has a contrasting form on the interior and exterior, as it isn’t a shape you can simply throw unless you spend a lot of time blasting the inside shape with a heat gun in order to firm it up, just so you can then alter the outside walls. Thus, isn’t it simply easier to wait and do all of that at the turning stage, after the clay has changed into a drier, leather hard state.
This, combined with very thin walls and extraordinarily tall foot-ring, that’s trimmed hollow, makes for a piece that is, I think, deceptively difficult to execute. I sometimes worry that by showing these very specific techniques that beginners might feel as if this is the “correct” way of trimming work, and whilst there is no right or wrong way, there are certainly easier and harder approaches and this, well, I reckon on it’s the trickier side of things.
I turn the pot with its form upright, as it allows me to feel the cross section of the vessel as I trim, this is something you can’t do if the bowl is placed upside-down, base pointing up, like they normally are then trimmed. The thing is, for these contrasting forms, it’s absurdly helpful, as I can run my fingers over the walls, inside and out, to feel where those thicknesses are, especially where the angles change direction.
There are other difficulties, such as pinning the pot down via a skim of slip and trimming a foot that’s as deep as these often have. Of course, you could potentially throw a foot of this size, yet I prefer to make them as one, single block of clay, as it just means drying them out thereafter isn’t as complex as compared to drying out an assemblage that’s created from two pieces.
I could write about this specific shape for hours, which I hope demonstrates just how much space in occupies in my mind.
#craft #clay #handmade #bowl #satisfying
