Giving Pottery A Try

A has been wanting to try making pottery on a wheel for a couple of years now, no doubt spurred on by her Auntie Jaimee, who's been throwing pottery for many years now and is quite talented. Grandma gave her money towards a pottery class last Christmas, so after many months of indecision and balking at the high price of classes here, we decided to just go for it and try a class. The class was called a 2+2+2  (2 people, for 2 hours, making 2 pieces), and was a good fit because it was scheduled just for us so it was a private class, and was done during the day when the studio was pretty much empty. The pottery studio we chose is just on the edge of downtown, and is a very serious studio, with hundreds of pieces of amazing artwork in every corner of the place. Some of the classes I looked at in other places were much more casual and included a small amount of time on the wheel, but this place was the real deal (and the prices showed it).

a few of the many, many shelves of unfinished pottery around the studio

Once we got there, K decided she wanted to try making pottery, too, and they said we could add her on to the class for a small fee, so we went ahead and did that. Who could say 'no' to these cuties in their aprons?

The teacher gave us a quick tour of the studio, including a look inside the huge kilns

this one was empty and cool, but there was one more to her left that was on and mighty warm inside

And then we sat down behind the wheels, ready to get to work on our pieces.

 

The teacher had all of our stations set up for us already, and while he covered a few of the basics of how to throw pottery (like wheel speed and water usage), he did all the hard stuff, like centering the clay and helping us stay on center and form our pieces.

Our first assignment was to make a bowl, so we worked ever-so-carefully pulling the clay up and spreading it out, and making the inside have a beautiful, even curve.

A's bowl

I had definite issues keeping my clay consistent, and I ended up with quite a wonky bowl. I tried again, but it ended up just as wonky. Good thing I'd fallen in love with my uneven bowl, and I wasn't disappointed with it at all.

My bowl - you can't really tell it's crooked here, but when it was spinning on the wheel, it was really obvious.

K's bowl

After our bowls were all finished, it was time to work on our cups. This helped us practice pulling the clay up even higher, without widening it. We weren't very good at thinning the clay, though, so our cups were very thick and stout.

A's cup (she had used a design tool to make diagonal lines on the outside.

A's bowl and cup, all finished

My bowl and cup (and K's cup on the side of the photo)

Our second project was to sculpt the clay using our hands instead of the wheel. We made our way over to the giant hand-cranked flattening wheel to squish the clay down flat and thin, kind of like you do with pasta.

that's our clay pre-flattening on the table on the right

Once the clay was flattened, we got to work, cutting out different sized rectangles using wooden blocks as guides, and then smoothing the edges and top. Next, we used stamps, rollers, stencils, and carving tools to decorate the surface of the rectangles however we liked. The last step was to put the clay on top of a giant foam block and then press down in the center of the clay with a slightly smaller wooden block than we had used to cut the form, so the edges would curl up on all sides. The looked a little bit like sushi plates when we were done.

A making patterns on the clay

One finished tray from each of us (plus a free-form piece that C made on the upper-right, even though she wasn't in the class). Each of us made three of these trays, in any size we wanted. I let C make one of mine. That's hers with the gecko in the front.

After our trays were all done, we had just enough time to pick the glazes for all of our pieces. It was tough to make a choice from all of the beautiful samples.

Choices, choices...

All the pieces were given little slips of paper with the chosen glaze color on them. Can't wait to see how they turn out!

That's a guinea pig on the table with the trays, in case you couldn't tell for some reason. C also made a snake. They aren't sure if those pieces will fire without falling apart, so there's no guarantee, but they offered to give it a try.

Actual Date: 12/5/13