How to Make a Stoneware Pottery Bowl, from Beginning to End — Narrated Version

this time i'm going to be showing you how i throw trim glaze and fire these one pound medium bowls or 453 grams our spotters tend to use both imperial and metric measurements so it can get a bit confusing as always the clay is wedged up wayed out and then i individually give each little lump a small spiral wedge just to bring all the pieces together this is a high iron stonework clay body i'm using and for these simple shaped bowls i like the clay to be very soft for more complicated and taller forms i tend to use clay that's a bit firmer but for these bowls i don't need it and it really helps to speed up the centering process at the beginning once on the wheel i begin by centering the clay in this process my aim is to simply squeeze the clay into the middle as best as possible so that there are no wobbles or undulations or pockets of air left cloning it up and down like this is like giving it a final wedge but on the wheel and it helps to align all the clay particles which makes the clay more plastic and better for throwing if you skip this process and you leave a few undulations in the clay they'll only come back to bite you later on because as you throw the clay these problems just become exaggerated after it has been centered i can open up the massive clay and begin pulling the walls up i purposefully leave the bases thick on these so there's ample clay later on so i can trim away a nice foot ring it's perhaps a centimeter or a centimeter and a half and i can judge this just by eye at this stage as i pull up the walls on the bowl i'm making sure to leave them quite thick especially the rim as in a moment i'll begin to stretch them out and if the room is already too thin as i do this it can simply split ruining your hard work so far so as i gradually pull my clay out towards my throwing gauge's pointer which is the rubber spike you can see protruding from the left the thickness of the rim gradually gets finer and finer as the diameter gets wider i set my throwing gauge beforehand simply by throwing a bowl and measuring it with a ruler once it's at the correct dimensions i just set my throwing gauge equally you can use the bristles of a paintbrush but you don't want to use anything too firm as it can damage the rim if they happen to collide then remove a skim of clay from the underside and then use a sponge to remove any excess slip before using a sharp metal kidney to remove much of the lines and to neaten up the interior form generally speaking it's best to finish this part of the pot off as best you can during the throwing stage as trimming the interior form later on once leather hard can be a pain as all the turning simply falls straight back onto the tool and the area you're working in once the rim has been shammy leathered smooth i undercut the piece with a wire dry off my fingertips of slip and then carefully pry the bowl off the wheel and set it aside on my wear board the throwing stage of these is quite fast and simple so it only takes a few hours to throw 80 to 100 of them and once they've all been thrown i let them sit out overnight to firm up to leather heart weather permitting of course as in hotter months they would dry out too much but at the moment in the winter they tend to be pretty good to go the very next morning i always start trimming the firmness board first and then work my way backwards leaving those that are still a little bit soft to do last i want my balls to be just on the firmer side of leather heart enough so that if i were to squeeze the rim doesn't alter the whole form too much i begin by quickly tap centering a bowl into the middle and then i use three soft lumps of clay just to push down around the rim which holds it firmly in place to keep these lumps of clay from drying out throughout the day as i'm trimming i occasionally just dunk them in water which keeps them nice and soft and usable then i take my pair of calipers which are measured to about 5.5 centimeters and i score in a line on the foot this line marks the outer boundary of my foot ring and i don't bother with another interior line as i can work out this measurement just by eyeballing it i then proceed to my favorite part of the process which is trimming the outside form of the bowl here i'm trying to echo the interior form upon the outside removing the excess clay that was needed to support the overhanging walls of the throne stage and neatening up the form making it look better and the overall pot lighter all of these turnings that are being removed can be recycled later on i just soak them in water once they've slagged down i can put them on plaster backs and eventually i can wedge that clay back up ready to be thrown into new pots as the years have gone by and i've made more and more pots the more i realize i think i'm a potter that prefers the trimming process to the actual throwing process there's something that's just so deeply satisfying about it once the outer walls are trimmed i begin to remove clay on the foot ring itself this foot ring i divide into two parts by trimming in two facets which you'll see more clearly later on one of these facets creates a groove which acts as a glaze catch later on and the other will remain air as a nice area to stamp my maker's mark on once the outside walls have been trimmed and the foot ring defined i can begin to remove clay from inside the foot ring i push out to adhere with the corner of the turning tool to really remove as much mass as possible as quickly as possible you might also notice that my hands are always touching whenever i'm trimming this makes all your motions a lot more stable which is exactly what you want when turning pots all my movements are controlled and stable and i make sure that i turn through any wobbles presented to me in the bowl i don't let the bowls wobbles dictate the way i trim i just trim right through them these days i know how deep i can go with the foot ring trimmed so many it's become almost second nature but what really helps is the fact that each thrown bowl is exactly the same as it means i can trim away the exact same amount on the underside afterwards finally i use my handmade makers mark to stamp what is essentially my signature onto the lower facet of the foot ring stamping in my maker's mark displaces some of the clay on the foot so afterwards i just run my fingers over top like this pushing down slightly to make it flat once again and that's it now just to repeat this process 80 more times i then lift it away and it's always quite a surprise to feel just how light it is compared to when it went on approximately half the weight is removed during this process making the bowls much lighter all the bowls are then placed on their rims and are allowed to dry slowly over a couple of days until they're completely bone dry once all the moisture has left the clay body place them into my electric kiln so i can biscuit them overnight this firing makes the clay much stronger and also makes the pots absorbent which is necessary for when they need to be glazed before that i need to wax the foot rings i tap center the balls and then generously brush on a layer of wax over the foot ring and two of the facets either side of the base the layer of wax acts as a simple wax resist when i'm glazing and it means glaze isn't absorbed into this portion of the foot ring which is necessary as there can't be any glaze that comes into direct contact with the kiln shelves during the firing otherwise the bowls will stick to the kiln shelves and i have to break them off which destroys the bowl and damages the expensive kiln shelves once waxed i place the bowl's foot ring to foot ring and as the wax hasn't fully dried yet the two bowls fuse together slightly and as the wide diameter of the rim holds the pot firmly in place means i can move them around like this very easily and afterwards when it comes to glazing them individually with a little pressure you can snap them apart i could simply place the bowls inside each other but i don't like any waxed portion touching any area that's going to have glaze put onto it as even a tiny speck of wax would stop the glaze from being absorbed into an area i want the glaze to be so stacking them like this where wax only touches wax is a good way to do it each bowl is then grasped with a pair of tongs and dunked into the glaze but usually i hold it for about four or five seconds before slowly removing it which tends to leave the glazes surface far neater than if i were to quickly remove it from the glaze and here you can clearly see the area where the wax has resisted the glaze this is a red iron oxide coloured crackle glaze which once reduction fired will come out as a dark green colour the more red iron is added to the glaze the darker green it'll look once fired although the more red iron you add the more fluid the glaze becomes during the firings and also the colour slowly diminishes and becomes black and even brown so it's just a matter of finding the right percentage of red iron oxide that works well with my type of reduction firing and the type of clay i use if i use a different clay body the glaze itself will look entirely different too after being glazed the bowls take a couple of days to dry out again and that's when i do the cleanup and as this happens the dark pink color here slowly lightens as the moisture leaves the vessel as it dries out like this the glaze's surface goes from being very tacky to very powdery and it's much easier to clean up the glazes surfaces when they're powdery as you can simply rub away any excess drips or the tongue marks which is always the first thing i do as you can see here the excess powder that's removed simply fills in the holes and you'd never even know they were tongue marks all i'm doing here is trying to make the surface as even as possible all over the vessel as the more even it is at this stage the better it'll look once finally fired a bowl of water underneath collects all of the dust and eventually i add this back to my larger buckets of glaze just by sieving it back in so again there's really very little wasted the excess glaze that comes off as powder also falls straight into the water so it isn't being left around so that you can breathe it in which you really don't want to do as essentially glazes contain thousands and thousands of tiny particles of glass shards so keeping dust to a minimum and wearing a mask is a must once the surface is totally smooth and even i'll begin to clean up the foot ring itself and i do this with a sponge that's saturated with water the bottom facet that i trimmed kind of acts as a guide for my sponge which makes creating a nice even line here much easier i'm trying to make the line here as even as possible i don't want there to be any undulations where the glaze dips below the foot ring and i make sure to sponge out all of the glaze that goes inside my maker's mark this is slow time consuming work but i really think that the effort you spend here making the glaze as pristine as you can really pays off at the end once the pots finally fired once the outside of the foot ring is done i can begin sponging off the inside of the foot ring which is all together a more tricky process simply because of how fiddly it is cleaning up all my glazed wear like this is one of the tasks i don't really ever look forward to so generally speaking i'll spend a few days doing this solidly all day just so i get over and done with it's definitely laborious but it's also the final step in the making process and it means i can finally pack them into the kiln and do a few gas firings and at long last be able to see some completed work so that was the cleanup for one bowl and usually i'm cleaning up four to five hundred pieces in any one go just to give you an idea of the time and scale of this process now it's time to pack my gas kiln this is a rhoda kg 340 which i'm currently firing off of mains gas each pot is carefully loaded in making sure that no two pieces are actually touching as if they do they'll stick together and i'll have to break them apart ruining them this is slow careful work each pot is double checked just to make sure it's in the right place and on each layer i'm trying to squeeze in as many pots as i physically can so that my firing is as cost effective as it can be but also the denser the pack more easily you'll be able to put the kiln into reduction later on during the firing after each layer is complete carefully place over the kiln shelves for the next layer and gradually fill it all the way up the tubes you can see in the background here are the flues of the kiln this is where the exhaust escapes during the firing and by manipulating how quickly this exhaust can leave by sliding dampers over them during the firing is how you control the strength of reduction reduction being a specific atmosphere you place the kiln into where you throttle how quickly the exhaust can leave making it burn inefficiently as there's just not enough oxygen and as a result the flame seeking oxygen reaches inside the pots themselves and changes the molecules there stripping away the oxygen which in turn changes the colors of the pots to the greens that you'll see later on in this video the following morning i'll come in very early to start the firing i light each of the four burners and put them onto a very low pressure and of course i've lit the kiln with the doors open you never want to light the kiln with the doors closed as that's what can cause them to blow up i then tightly screw closed the door and over a couple of hours just very gradually increase the temperature which i do just by upping the gas pressure a little bit if you increase the temperature too quickly you risk blowing up the pots inside so it's best to take it slow when the kiln reaches 860 degrees centigrade i initiate reduction which i do by increasing the gas and air pressure significantly and then by sliding the dampers to about halfway closed you'll know when it's as strong reduction as there will be a smell that emanates from the kiln which is like sulfur or spoiled eggs a more obvious sign though is that flames will begin to shoot out of the spy hole and out of the flues at the back and i keep the kill in reduction all the way until the end of the firing which is about at 1 295 degrees centigrade and finally once my cones have bent over to the right position which i can see through the spy holes in the kiln stall i know it's time to turn the kiln off the whole firing itself takes about nine and a half hours and as the kiln is completely manual i have to be there the entire time keeping an eye on it and constantly checking it and changing the settings to make sure it stays on track and finally the kiln is crash cooled down to a thousand degrees before being closed up again the silence is always so nice after a long day at the studio about a day and a half later the kiln will have cooled down enough so that i can finally open it i crack the door open and slowly let the hot air out it's still about 150 degrees centigrade inside so i still have to wait a little bit before i can unpack them this is always an anxiety-inducing moment as throughout the entire process of firing you've never actually seen the pots so it's actually only when you open the kiln that you know if everything's gone okay or not the tinkling noise you can hear is the sound of the glazes contracting over the clay body underneath and at last i can unpack the pots each is inspected as i take it out of the kiln to check for defects or any other irregularities so far this new kiln has been pretty good i'd say about 95 of the pots come out absolutely perfectly with the other five percent needing to be refired or simply thrown away there's always some loss with handmade ceramics it's just the way it is and i think most potters you'll ever talk to will be very accustomed to failure and losing large portions of work i usually start at the bottom as the lower shelves are much cooler than the top and then later once the top has cooled down i can begin to unpack that and here are the bowls you saw at the beginning of the video and that pink glaze you saw me dunk the bowls into is the darkest green version you can see here each is a little different some are slightly darker hues and others have more dots of iron over the surface pulled out through reduction and it's this variance which i like so much no two pots are exactly the same and that's it the end of the process weeks and weeks of work it always feels so good to finally have the pots finished at the end of their long journey thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Florian Gadsby

Views: 403,421

Rating: 4.9498649 out of 5

Keywords: pottery, how to make pottery, Florian Gadsby, floriangadsby, handmade pottery, wheel throwing, ceramics, how to make a bowl, how to throw pottery, pottery for beginners, wheel thrown pottery, making pottery, how to throw bowls, making ceramics, handmade ceramics, how to throw bowls on the wheel, pottery wheel, how to turn bowls, how to finish pottery bowls, turning bowls, turning pottery bowls, trimming bowls, firing pottery, gas firing, firing clay, reduction firing, clay

Id: U64bLz4EWRI

Length: 15min 2sec (902 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/HumanClaymore]

That was absolutely mesmerizing

[u/beesareinthewhatnow]

I didn't expect to watch the whole thing, but I'm glad I did.

[u/Tersphinct]

Don't get in the kiln!

[u/gruez]

These bowls sell for $80/ea on his shop, although they're all sold out.

http://www.floriangadsby.com/shop

[u/DamnitRuby]

There's a neat pottery competition show on HBO max kind of in the vein of the British Baking show. Everyone is so nice and lovely and they make some awesome stuff and it's so relaxing to watch, even with the competition aspect!

[u/mesaywee]

Narrated like a Wes Anderson film, or like this Canada short. Warning nsfw https://vimeo.com/97232050

[u/heyboyhey]

Wait, how does that pink glace turn into a stony green?

[u/krazyexp]

Amazing!

[u/iBackMovieClips]

looks great