How to Create a Two-Part Pottery Vase - A Journey of Learning

This course follows the creation of handmade two-part pottery vases, from wedging and throwing clay through joining, trimming, glazing, and kiln firing. It emphasizes experimentation and the maker’s failures as part of the learning process.

Syllabus

- Introduction
- Wedging clay
- Throwing the body of the vase
- Throwing the upper walls of the vase
- Scoring and slipping the parts together
- Incising out the excess to form the rim
- Melding the two parts together
- Drying the vases out slowly to leather hard
- Trimming the vases
- Loading the electric kiln for a bisque firing, 1000ºc
- Unpacking the now bisque fired pots
- Waxing the bases of the vases
- Glazing the vases
- Cleaning over the glazed surfaces
- Cleaning the bases of the vases
- Painting bat wash onto a silicon carbide kiln shelf
- Packing the gas kiln for a reduction firing, 1290º
- Ciro, the mascot
- Firing the gas kiln
- Unpacking the gas kiln a few days later
- Unloading the 'fallen' pot
- A close up of the crumpled vessel
- Smashing the failed pot
- Sanding the base of the pot
- The finished vase
- Tidying up