How To Get Into Pottery Cheap

this is a block of clay that i processed myself cost me essentially nothing the gas to drive out and pick it up and the time it took to grind it and mix it together with water i hear from people all the time who are interested in getting started in pottery but there's an incredible barrier to entry in pottery as a hobby and that is the price it is quite an expensive hobby to get started in most people doing pottery are either paying over a hundred dollars a month for studio fees to have access to a local pottery studio or they're setting up a home studio which can cost tens of thousands of dollars well i'm here to tell you that pottery does not have to be an expensive hobby this block of clay is a good example i dug it myself i processed it myself my own time is the cost if i'm doing it for hobby or i'm stuck at home during the pandemic then time really isn't of that much value to me i'm spending the time because it's something i enjoy doing there is a life i lead in this city hurrying to cut my teeth i can take what i need to get by i'm engaged in a hobby called primitive pottery that is it doesn't use any high-tech gadgets it doesn't use any expensive equipment it uses primitive technology that is really simple tools your hands and some basic tools you can make yourself i contend that it's just as much fun as your average everyday studio-based ceramics it's certainly just as challenging as a lifetime of challenging forms and techniques for you to learn and practice on it's rewarding you're left with beautiful pottery when you're done and best of all it's practically free the tools you can get either cheaply or you already have them in your kitchen or you can make them yourself today i'm going to go over the basics of primitive pottery the tools the materials and the basic techniques needed to get started in it and i'm going to show you how you can do the low cost option or the entirely free option and you can decide for yourself which way you want to go i don't have a problem if you want to use a kiln or a wheel that's all good but if you want to save that money that's required to have those and you still want to play with clay that's still doable [Music] okay let's talk a little bit about tools most of the tools you need probably are already in your house my primary tool for making pottery is the gourd rib which i make myself from gourds you might not have access to gourds or you might find making gourd ribs difficult or challenging you can purchase these on my website and i'm not telling you this to sell them i'm telling you because this is another place where you can acquire these cheaply but you can make ribs out of lots of things you can also go down to your nearest michaels or hobby lobby and buy some plastic rubber or metal ribs that work just as well for making hand-built pottery uh you can you know if you have old used up bottles around the house you can cut out your own ribs it's easy to make them out of almost anything that is a little bit flexible i like my ribs to be in a kidney shape but some are more round or rectangular so there's a nice circular shape that you could use and this this gain bottle is a fairly heavy duty plastic it's heavier than like a milk jug now if i wanted a kidney shape i could just and there you go now you might take a little time to refine the shape but that would work for making pottery now after my pottery is formed i generally scrape it down to smooth it and to thin it i like to use a deer rib bone which is another thing you can get free or very cheaply i bought this and several others like it at the tucson gem and mineral show a few years ago but if you're a hunter you have access to deer ribs you may find them on the side of the road where they've been hit by cars you may find them while out hiking keep your eyes open things like this but you don't have to have a deer rib bone you could use a butter knife which you probably already have in your kitchen another thing that's great for scraping pottery is a credit card that sharp edge and you can kind of bend it so that curves scrape the pottery with that sky's the limit think about what you have that has that sharp edge and use it now when i'm forming pottery i use a pookie for the base that kind of shapes the base of the pot to be rounded and it keeps that rounded surface while i work on it i make these myself from clay that i've dug and i fire them myself but you don't have to go that route if you don't want to new mexico clay sells these for i forget what it's a ridiculously low price five bucks or something and they're larger than this but you don't even have to do that you probably have bowls in your house this is a glass or ceramic bowl that i purchased at target and it has a nice rounded shape anything with the shape that you want to use for the bottom of your pot will work now if i stick clay in this bowl it'll stick good because this is not a porous surface the way earthenware is so all i do is take a cloth a piece of cotton cloth this is an old handkerchief and i just place it over there and then i put the clay in that that way when i'm done i can just lift it right out because the clay won't stick to the pot the clay will stick to the handkerchief but i can peel the handkerchief off the bottom of the pot so that works pretty good i have stone tools that i use for cutting the clay like trimming the rim and those kind of things that have been made for me by a friend of mine who is a flint knapper and those are great for doing it the authentic way the prehistoric people did but you don't have to have you can use a steak knife after i form my pottery and i'm polishing it giving it a smooth surface i use stones smooth stones to polish the pots now this one i got for free at the beach in california i'm sure there's some place near you even if it's not at a beach maybe at a river where you can find smooth stones or pebbles to use for polishing pottery this one is glassy smooth this is a lapidary stone it's been tumbled i bought this at the tucson gem and mineral show now you could buy these at a german mineral show you can purchase them from me because i resell them on my website or if you know somebody that has a rock tumbler or you could go to a rock shop you can purchase stones like this yourself but you're not limited to using stones for polishing pottery i know people that use the back of spoons which are just as rounded and smooth as a stone i know people that use push rods from engines anything that is hard and smooth can be used to polish pottery now when it comes to a work surface i can use my kitchen countertop that's great i don't have to have a dedicated studio space i have a workbench out in my studio that has a plywood top which is great because it's a little bit porous keeps the clay from sticking to it this granite countertop the clay would stick to it pretty good if i put it on here so it helps to have a porous work surface you can use a piece of plywood you can go down to home depot and get just a little square of plywood for a couple of bucks or concrete board cement board they call it that works good or a piece of drywall even anything that's a little bit porous is a better work surface for your clay because then the clay doesn't stick to it that well so right here at home without spending any money i can grab a bowl out of my cupboard i can make a scraper out of a used bottle i can polish my pottery with a spoon i have all the tools i need right here to make pottery and i don't have to spend a nickel i don't even have to go anywhere [Music] now as for clay i've already told you i get my clay for free except for a little bit of labor and you might not know where to find clay where you live but i've got some great videos to help you find clay in nature if you're interested in finding and processing your own clay check out the video i'm going to link right up here and that'll go into detail about how to find clay in nature where you live now you might not be interested in going out and digging clay and that's understandable that's not for everybody if you're interested in purchasing clay there's a thousand places where you can buy clay there's probably a ceramic store in your community or a craft store like a michaels or a hobby lobby that sells clay or you can order it on the internet so you can go out and purchase clay clay isn't extremely expensive now a lot of people spend a lot of money on glazes i low fire my pottery so i don't have to worry about glazes the finishes i put on my pottery are either created by polishing with a stone which once again costs nothing but labor or they're created by different colored slips and iron oxides now i go out and collect these slips and oxides myself but you don't have to do that you certainly can and you can check out some of my videos if you're interested in doing that but if you're interested in just purchasing your colors you can do that too so for a recent workshop for example i needed to send iron oxides to all my students who are participating in this zoom workshop so instead of going out and collecting the iron oxides and processing them myself which is a lot of labor and then sending it to these students i purchased it i went on amazon and i bought i don't know how many pounds five pounds of red iron oxide which works great it's exactly the same as if i went and found hematite stones and ground them up and process it's just a lot less labor for me it's easier for me to purchase this so if you're interested in doing what i'm doing you can do that and save yourself a lot of money on expensive glazes and such just by buying some iron oxides or something and using that to slip and polish your pottery if you're interested in learning how to hand build i have a lot of videos that go into coil pottery making and slab building and these kind of things hand building pottery that you can check out for free on youtube i also have master classes that are available on my website these are video based workshops that take you through the coil building process step by step and will teach you the whole process of building pots this way this is the kind of pottery you can build at home on your kitchen countertop without spending a lot of money on materials if you're really interested in learning hand building i also have the ancient potter's club which is a membership it gives you access to all of the master classes as well as extra lessons on building certain types of forms and weekly one-hour live stream workshops in which everybody can participate over zoom so those are all on my website if you're interested in that i'll put the link down in the doobly-doo in case you're interested [Music] and now that brings us to firing which is really a big hurdle for a lot of people because they think once i have the pots how am i going to make it into ceramics how am i going to make it pottery and not just dry clay and so people a lot of people feel they have to have a membership in a local pottery studio because that's how they get their pottery fired and that's fine i don't have a problem with that but that's just one way to do it that's a more pricey way to do it because you have to pay these people and it costs a lot of money to fire an electric kiln let's be honest but firing is something that i've never spent a dime for because i fire my own pottery out in the woods so i actually take my pottery i load it up in my truck i drive out to public land i live in arizona there's a lot of forest service bureau land management land around and i usually fire out there where there's lots of firewood and nobody really cares if i build a campfire which is essentially what i have when i'm firing my pottery and it doesn't cost me a dime except the time but i don't mind spending the time because it's my hobby i enjoy it if you're interested in learning how to fire this way you can check out this video i'm going to link up here or you can go on my website again i have a master class about firing pottery outdoors or you can join the ancient potters club these are all options at different price points depending on how much money you want to spend you learn on youtube for free you can spend a little money on my website and learn from me if either one is fine or you might be one that says you know i don't want to mess with that i still want to fire in a kiln and that's fine too this type of pottery fires at very low temperatures so it actually uses less electricity and therefore it is less costly to fire this low fire pottery that i'm making than it is to fire glaze where pottery which is actually fired twice this is fired once so when you're looking at the costs of firing pottery this pottery is much more inexpensive much more affordable to produce because there's less money involved in running that kiln every time you fire it and then there's tony sores's urban anazi charcoal firing which is really a great way to fire pottery if you're in a city you don't really have access to public land or you don't want to drive 20 miles to get out of the city to fire those kind of things he's developed a process in which the pottery is surrounded by charcoal briquettes and fire now charcoal briquettes are great because they don't make a lot of flames they don't make a lot of smoke but they burn really hot and it's a great way to fire pottery you know in a very small yard without having people calling the fire department on you or something i'll put the link to tony's process he has a youtube video about it down in the doobly-doo in case you're interested in checking that out i recommend it if you're in a city and you don't have access to public land but you do want to do some firings like this [Music] i hope i've explained to you today that getting started in pottery need not be expensive and especially if you're just wanting to test out the waters if you're just wanting to see if it's something you might be interested in you can try it out you can get started without spending a lot of money and then later if you think you like it and you want to spend more money you certainly can if you like this video and you learned something from it do me a favor and give me a thumbs up if you'd like to learn more about do it yourself pottery tools check out this video over here which is going to go into more detail on that thanks for watching i'll catch you next [Music] time you

Channel: Andy Ward's Ancient Pottery

Views: 6,623

Rating: 4.9930677 out of 5

Keywords: pottery, clay, coil pot, coil pottery, how to, DIY, craft, primitive pottery, ancient pottery, hand built pottery, southwest pottery, traditional pottery, making pottery, make pottery, primitive skills, andy ward, coil and scrape pottery, coil method, ceramics, ceramic arts, handmade, handbuilt, handcrafted, maker, creative, get into pottery cheap, get into pottery, diy pottery, diy pottery tools, pottery at home

Id: 1I4ikWwjNjk

Length: 14min 45sec (885 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 24 2021