Uploaded November 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
It’s interesting how over the years as you make, you gradually become more and more involved with a specific piece, learning how to fix and correct certain parts to your liking that you may have not as been as focused on in the past.
For instance, with these, and with a majority of my pots in fact, I’d often leave relatively thick throwing marks on the inside, yet the issue is, when you then trim from the outside, making the vessel really very thin, you create dozens of tiny rings of particularly thin clay, which can be likely to sag and distort, especially on pots where there’s quite a lot of weight on the top, like these. You suddenly see what’s wrong and how to fix it and this case that means once the shape has been thrown, I spend quite a lot of time at the end refining the interior shape, straightening the walls and flattening any overt throwing rings.
The second correction is more technique based, I used to throw pots leaving quite a mean rim, not realising how integral this was for the overall strength of the pot as it’s being thrown. Nowadays I leave them thicker, which supports the overall shape and helps keep everything spinning evenly, then I’ll either just bevel at the end, or I simply wait until the pot is leather hard, then I do a majority of the refining and thinning then.
These slow changes and corrections are things you don’t always immediately pick up on when working alone and it’s why I think undergoing some more serious ceramics training, or attending masterclasses, is such a beneficial way of learning, as it’s these subtle alternations that end up being pointed out to you.
#wheelthrownpottery #clay #handmade #pottery #studiopottery #ceramics
It’s interesting how over the years as you make, you gradually become more and more involved with a specific piece, learning how to fix and correct certain parts to your liking that you may have not as been as focused on in the past.
For instance, with these, and with a majority of my pots in fact, I’d often leave relatively thick throwing marks on the inside, yet the issue is, when you then trim from the outside, making the vessel really very thin, you create dozens of tiny rings of particularly thin clay, which can be likely to sag and distort, especially on pots where there’s quite a lot of weight on the top, like these. You suddenly see what’s wrong and how to fix it and this case that means once the shape has been thrown, I spend quite a lot of time at the end refining the interior shape, straightening the walls and flattening any overt throwing rings.
The second correction is more technique based, I used to throw pots leaving quite a mean rim, not realising how integral this was for the overall strength of the pot as it’s being thrown. Nowadays I leave them thicker, which supports the overall shape and helps keep everything spinning evenly, then I’ll either just bevel at the end, or I simply wait until the pot is leather hard, then I do a majority of the refining and thinning then.
These slow changes and corrections are things you don’t always immediately pick up on when working alone and it’s why I think undergoing some more serious ceramics training, or attending masterclasses, is such a beneficial way of learning, as it’s these subtle alternations that end up being pointed out to you.
#wheelthrownpottery #clay #handmade #pottery #studiopottery #ceramics
