Greek Studies: The Ancient Art of Throwing a Pot on the Wheel

The wedding, in addition to preparing the clay, introduces you to the clay, so it's like shaking hands with the clay, so I make the clay move in a circle and I'm in the area, so I'm going to add a little bit of water so that the clay adheres well to the surface, so the first thing I want to do in terms of casting is to center the clay, so I'm going to leave the clay. I want to make sure that I'm pressing this clay and I'll do something called coning, I'll bring the clay up a little bit, then I'll bring it down and do this a couple of times to really send all of this out. piece and I have a little bit wider base before I start so now my clay is centered and I have about the right diameter that I want so the next part is opening it up so I'm going to start pressing down a little bit. a little bit in the center, you know, in a sense, it's already a container, it's a very shallow, thick-walled container, but this is the beginning of being a container, so I'm going to open it up even more, so I'm going to lower it thus. and how far I go down again is predetermined by how big I want the bottom of the piece to be how big the foot I want to have if I want to have a foot how thick the floor should be so all over again everything What I want I already have it in my head right now.

I'm thinking about how wide I want my piece on the inside, but it seems like a good size for the inside and I'm going to compress my clay here, so I'm going to bring this up. so I'll do this several times going down to the bottom and up the clay to do the same on the inside. Now I started thinking about the next step, which would be to think about the shape. I can't let my belly move. from here to here and then I think I'm actually going to be able to have a shoulder or a neck or an ellipse, so I have to think about the different segments of this and just imagine it as my I keep in mind where it's going to go, so I'll zoom in a little bit. top because it's a little wide, I'll narrow it a little because I don't want to lose control if it gets too wide, the clay really stretches and it's very hard to get it back on, so I want to try to keep this rim under control on something that has a little more belly.

I'm going to compress this clay before stretching it some more. I'm not really changing the contour much, I'm just giving the clay a little bit of compression and strength, so I'm going to go back in and stretch out a little bit more, so I'll be here when they have the mast. shoulders I'm going to bring this in a little bit closer to see how far this shape can go with my shape I'm going to compress as much as I can and then leave it alone, just leave it alone so basically I'm going to work from the top and we'll see a couple of times to help soften more than compress that room also to compress and strengthen, you know, if I wanted to put a really sharp line there, I could do that. that you know, if I do it, I could use it, so I'll say the corner, you know, to make an incision on a very sharp edge right there, you know, the Greeks segmented their pots a lot along the vertical axis and so Therefore, they could create an area. on the neck they would use some kind of geometric design and they could outline where the shoulder would be so you can start to think about this pot in different areas if you're telling a story through images that you know you could have. this B I want you to know that this could be the prologue and here is the main story and usually something decorative up here, so even if these incised lines don't stay, just having them there again helps you think about how to allocate your space and it's very easy to change at this stage if you feel it's too much space you know you can take it out and put it a little bit higher so it's a nice blank canvas at this point. that every day in the studio is another opportunity to learn to explore and try something that you're still going to get, you're still going to have this moment of uncertainty and you go and that's what you live for because if everything was totally sure that it would be like this.

I think we would all get bored.