How to Throw, Trim and Glaze a Cylindrical Bud Vase — Narrated Version

in this week's video i'll be showing you how i throw and trim one of my cylindrical blood vases these are perhaps one of my more recognizable forms they're essentially a simple straight cylinder but with a lip that slopes inward but you'll see how i do that later first of all though i've got to do some wedging this is a high iron stoneware clay body that's meant for reduction firing hence its color it's often mistaken as being terracotta but in actuality it's a high firing slightly groggy stoneware clay i weigh each lump of clay out at about one and a half pounds or 680 grams then i quite thoroughly spiral wedge each massive clay as these forms really benefit from being well wedged the process of folding in the rim quite so dramatically like you'll see later is enough to really exaggerate any air pockets or inconsistencies in the clay so i make sure these balls of clay are very well wedged there's a certain knack to spoil wedging smaller bits of clay like this but in many ways my hands are doing almost the exact same thing as they would be if it were a much larger piece of clay simply put this process helps to homogenize the massive clay it aligns the clay's particles and helps remove any inconsistencies and that's exactly what we want for when we're throwing on the wheel if you try to throw with poorly wedged clay you can have a much more difficult time and it's sort of the same thing as centering if you don't center your clay correctly when it comes to actually pulling the walls of clay and opening up you're just gonna have a really difficult time getting anything done so when you're first beginning out on the wheel especially these are stages you cannot afford to skip this process you see me doing now where i squeeze the clay with my palms and then push it back down it's called coning the clay and it's essentially just like wedging but on the wheel and once i feel the clay is running totally smooth and i can't see my fingers wobbling at all or the ball of clay underneath my hands undulating it's time to open up the ball of clay and form the base you'll notice that throughout many of these processes my two hands are connected often it's my right thumb or my right hand resting on my left hand but any sort of connection helps build stability in your movements and stability and control are really the keys to throwing pots well as i grab at the clay from the bottom here and pull it up all my movements are completely steady and even i move my hands up gradually i don't rush i don't stop it's just one clean even movement if you hesitate during a pull or if you come to a complete standstill you only thin out that one area in particular making it much thinner than the rest of the walls and that leads to all kinds of things like twists and collapsing pots what we're really after is completely even walls the entire way up when i reach into the base of the pot and i squeeze at the excess reserves of clay in the base the pinch between my fingers and the gap in between them i tried to keep that the same the entire way up only releasing pressure as i approach the rim as if you squeeze too hard as you go over the top you'll very easily just twist the pot and perform it all of what i just said is general good practice for throwing but there are of course circumstances where you need to throw the pot slightly differently for instance with this form i tried to keep my rim slightly thicker than i would in other situations as it's going to have to deal with the pressure of being distorted quite thoroughly later on and if it were too thin the walls simply couldn't take it and it would very easily collapse once the pot is at the correct height i begin cleaning up the outside of the form i remove a skirt of clay around the base and then i use a metal kidney to scrape away all the excess slip that builds up on the surface although i'm going to be altering the form some more doing this helps increase the strength of the vessel overall and the strengthened lower half of the walls helps when i fold over the top which is why for these forms i always set my throwing gauge slightly higher than need to be as the overall height of the pot will decrease once the top has been folded in i add some water back to the rim and then i gently color the top portion of the wall inward coaxing it in bit by bit this isn't the process i try to do all at once as i found rushing this process often leads to the inward sloping rim simply collapsing downward once the top has been angled in i spent some time throwing the clay to thin it out and gradually form the rim i found with these that the diameter of the hole is very important the narrow opening is important as it keeps the buds placed inside afterwards nice and upright but even if the hole is slightly too big it can kind of make the whole form feel a bit clumsy so the more narrow the better i think anyway you can always trim it to be slightly wider if needs be once the rough shape is there i can in the finishing procedures for the pot the outside form is cleaned up once again and then very carefully and using a rubber kidney this time rather than the metal one i'll angle the inward sloping rim downward the rubber kidney doesn't have as much bite as the metal one so there's less chance of it catching ruining the work you've been doing often the process of pushing it down causes a bulge to appear on the outside so afterwards i just scrape it back over like seen here with the metal kidney finally i use a shammy leather just to smooth over some of the sharper edges i don't worry too much about getting it absolutely perfect as i'll be trimming these quite thoroughly later on they're then wired off and then with dry hands i carefully lift the piece away i generally sell these pots in groups of three so i don't often make very many i always rather enjoy them especially this size as they're a lot less fiddly compared to the smaller versions i make [Music] and here we are a day later once the pots are leather hard i rub some water onto their bases and then really rub them into the metal the slip this creates in combination with the friction holds them very firmly onto the wheel and it means i can trim the entire form without any balls of clay getting in the way that hold the piece together or mechanical arms from a gripping device and all i'm doing in this process is gradually removing mass from the outside of the pot whilst also neatening up the shape getting it nice and thin and smooth and straight it's definitely one of the most satisfying processes too there are potters who really like to throw and throw only early trimming at all whereas there are other potters like myself i think they very much enjoy the process of trimming refining pots and finishing them i've always been obsessed with making pots as light as i can as refined as i can as that's the kind of work that always inspired me and it's turning a material into something that is essentially his polar opposite clay is just mud it's earth and rocks and the stone and the ground we walk on so you turn into an object that's refined in light and precious and delicate is always something i've really aspired to do once the outer walls are to my liking i use a flat metal edge just to smooth over the trimming lines and to neaten everything up once again this is a very simple tool but it's one i got from japan and i'm very attached to it so if i ever lose it or if i ever wear it out completely i'm going to be very upset once the walls are complete it's time to move on to the top there's barely any trimming to do here all i really do is remove the throwing rings and some of the marks that are left smoothing it out i place one finger inside the rim which i can position to catch any lumps of clay that might fall inside then just using my fingertips i burnish off that top sharp edge to make it nice and crisp and slightly smooth i want a fine edge here so that it can break through the glaze creating interesting interactions i then use the sharp end of this metal tool to slide it underneath the pot removing it cleaning the wheel head is essential too as i don't want any of those pieces of clay to stick onto the rim or damage it i delicately place the vars room side down and get it more or less centered as best i can before attaching three lumps of clay to hold it steadily in position the bases of these are quite easy to trim i just remove a beveled edge from the corner as i don't want a sharp edge near where the pods going to be used and picked up and put on the table as a fine edge is very susceptible to chipping then i remove the wiring off marks across the base and any weight that there might be here too and then i use a very flat metal kidney to burnish off these areas of the pot bases of pots are just as important as any other portion of the vessel so i always finish them carefully i don't want them to look forgotten and finally it's stamped with my little maker's mark i hand carve this out of porcelain and it's just a simple little f but it's my signature essentially that's it for the making process of these next they'll be biscuit-fired once bone dry to approximately 1000 degrees centigrade this makes the surface of the clay porous so the material laid in water which is the glaze will be absorbed into the clay body leaving just the materials on the outside of the vessel but i'll show how i glaze these in a minute first they've got to dry out properly which can take a couple of days and then be fired once i'm packed from the biskill they're very quickly waxed i then tap center the piece into the middle which will also be the topic of my video next week and then i brush on a layer of wax emulsion this acts as a resist for when the pots dunked into the glaze which means i have to spend a lot less time laboriously sponging away excess glaze this extra dab you see here is just to fill up my maker's mark otherwise glaze can fill up these tiny nooks and crannies and it can be very difficult to actually remove well not difficult but time consuming when i'm glazing several hundred pieces you want to avoid as many time-consuming little extra steps as possible and waxing doesn't take all that long thankfully i can get through maybe four or five hundred pieces in a day if i set my mind to it once all the pots have been waxed i can move on to glazing and these i do a little bit differently first i fill the inside up with glaze this dark red will become the green glaze you might know from my crackled glaze work i fill the inside part way and then very gradually pour it out with these sizes of ours i have to do them in two sections first i do the interior glaze and then i wait a couple of days until they've dried out again and then i dunk the outside if i were to submerge the whole vessel allow time for the glaze to bubble inside and bubble out it would take on far too thick of a layer so i have to do it this way round although you can't see it now the walls of the pot here will darken in color tremendously and this is because they've been saturated by the water inside the glaze so in between this interior layer of glaze and dunking the outside actually wait a day or two this allows the excess moisture to evaporate and makes the clay absorbent once again and then very carefully dip the outside pushing it all the way up to the rim then i can carefully draw it out and set it aside to dry up once again i always wait a couple of days between this stage and actually tightening up the pot which you'll see in a second once the glaze is really thoroughly dried out it becomes a lot easier to tidy up if i were to attempt to do this straight away the glaze would likely come off in clumps in my hand but after a couple of days the surface becomes incredibly powdery and i can just use a blunted knife to scrape away any excess all i'm doing here is removing any excess drips any marks and pinholes really the neater looks at this stage the neater and therefore the better it'll look once fired this is easily the most laborious step from the entire creation process and has to be done to every single pot so that's usually four to five hundred pieces all in a couple of days you'll notice there's a bowl of water underneath too and that's just simply to catch any of the dust and then i can recycle this eventually back into my much larger buckets of glaze and lastly i just sponge away the excess glaze around the foot neatening up the line where clay meets glaze and that's it all that's left is for the piece to be reduction fired but i won't show that process in this video as my previous video before this one shows that entire process in a lot more detail here's the finished fired piece after being reduction fired for about nine and a half hours and allowed to cool for a day and a half after that thanks as always for watching i'll see you next week you

Channel: Florian Gadsby

Views: 39,943

Rating: 4.9742765 out of 5

Keywords: pottery, ceramics, how to turn pottery, how to trim pottery, Florian Gadsby, floriangadsby, how to make pottery, trimming pottery, turning pottery, Asmr pottery, handmade pottery, stoneware pottery, pottery for beginners, Asmr, handmade ceramics, pottery wheel, pottery flower vase, ceramic flower vase, how to throw a vase, bud vase, ceramic bud vase, pottery bud vase, how to throw a bud vase, glazing a vase, how to glaze a flower vase, bud vases, how to make bud vases, clay

Id: 76gKT-lr6Eo

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 06 2020