Uploaded December 2025 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Narrow cylinders are the subject of this weekend’s YouTube video. These are tricky shapes and for a long time the bane of my life, as I threw them finely and dried them improperly, leading to wonky cylinders that were impossible to trim without wanting to pull my hair out. By way of making this ‘easier’, I changed the way I create these shapes to better fit my making style and that’s precisely what the fully narrated 21-minute film is all about; a link to which you can find in my profile’s biography through the Linktree link.
You’ll often hear me speak about the importance of drying work out evenly and slowly and recently, this gradual approach has become far more prevalent in my work. When I first setup my workshop after graduating from my apprenticeships, I think I was used to making work that was on the slightly thicker side, (think of the Maze Hill Pottery standard ware range if you followed me back then). Pots like this can often take being left out overnight without too many issues, as long as you’re strategic about it, yet when I started producing my own pottery in my own studio, for a while I was really pushing finesse, thinly thrown vessels that I’d then briefly trim. I’d throw these narrow cylinders and leave them out overnight and by morning they’re be perfectly leather hard, but they’d have also lent over in the direction a draft hit them, making them practically impossible to trim to my liking.
Thus, over the past year, I’ve begun drying pots out more slowly, in a far more controlled manner, together with leaving certain portions of them hefty, such as the rims, as this helps the vessels hold their shape as they turn leather hard. Then, I can trim the pots to my exact liking without having to worry about too much ‘movement’ in the form from improper, or too rapid, drying.
That’s what this video covers, the technique I’ve developed for creating these narrow shapes, together with discussing the absolute importance of the INTERIOR form, which again, was another quality I was perhaps overlooking. All of that, and much more, can be found in my latest YouTube upload! Thanks for watching.
#vase #cylinder #howto #pottery #ceramics #potterytips
Narrow cylinders are the subject of this weekend’s YouTube video. These are tricky shapes and for a long time the bane of my life, as I threw them finely and dried them improperly, leading to wonky cylinders that were impossible to trim without wanting to pull my hair out. By way of making this ‘easier’, I changed the way I create these shapes to better fit my making style and that’s precisely what the fully narrated 21-minute film is all about; a link to which you can find in my profile’s biography through the Linktree link.
You’ll often hear me speak about the importance of drying work out evenly and slowly and recently, this gradual approach has become far more prevalent in my work. When I first setup my workshop after graduating from my apprenticeships, I think I was used to making work that was on the slightly thicker side, (think of the Maze Hill Pottery standard ware range if you followed me back then). Pots like this can often take being left out overnight without too many issues, as long as you’re strategic about it, yet when I started producing my own pottery in my own studio, for a while I was really pushing finesse, thinly thrown vessels that I’d then briefly trim. I’d throw these narrow cylinders and leave them out overnight and by morning they’re be perfectly leather hard, but they’d have also lent over in the direction a draft hit them, making them practically impossible to trim to my liking.
Thus, over the past year, I’ve begun drying pots out more slowly, in a far more controlled manner, together with leaving certain portions of them hefty, such as the rims, as this helps the vessels hold their shape as they turn leather hard. Then, I can trim the pots to my exact liking without having to worry about too much ‘movement’ in the form from improper, or too rapid, drying.
That’s what this video covers, the technique I’ve developed for creating these narrow shapes, together with discussing the absolute importance of the INTERIOR form, which again, was another quality I was perhaps overlooking. All of that, and much more, can be found in my latest YouTube upload! Thanks for watching.
#vase #cylinder #howto #pottery #ceramics #potterytips
