Whichford Pottery: How we make our pots

nestling in the Wurlitzer countryside on the edge of the Cotswolds which furred pottery has become world renowned for its top-quality and made terracotta flower pots founded in 1976 by Jim Keeling the pottery is a working community following traditional methods to create its distinctive designs over the years the pottery has become well known for its imaginative and varied plantings using their terracotta as inspiration this has resulted in the winning of top awards at the Chelsea Flower Show there you go Joel there's the finished pots going off to the customers but they all start over here here's the clay as we buy it in its just as Doug like you find the ball of your garden we get it in by the lorry load and it's very important to us that we have control over how we blend it and process it it's quite a complicated process I'll take you to Richard and you'll show you how it's done so we start off with three clays which we blend Richard okay so this machine is a blender so we're adding the three more clay in a certain ratio and what a blender does is it mixes a three wall plate with a vast amount of water turning the clay into what we call a slip which is just like a liquid clay so there's two reasons why we're mixing the play with a lot of water one days together the other reason is to enable us to sniff the clay and that's what we're doing here we're camping beyond the clip we would do is a all the fans so we're just ending up with a clean slip which passes through the sieve and into our storage tank and it gets pumped into the filter press when we have enough pressure we have the water being forced through the filter cloths and the water just drains out onto the floor but all the clay particles will be retained inside that chamber the pressing process takes about seven maybe eight hours but at this stage the clay is very uneven typically you've got very hard outer to the em to the sheet but the middle of the sheet is very soft and sticking and gungi so the clay needs mixing with itself so we do that in a machine here called the pug mill so we're simply rolling the clay up I'm chucking it into the peg mill so this perk mill simply packages our clay into nice square manageable blocks when it comes out it gets chopped into chunks and stacked onto a pallet we then forget about the clay the longer we can keep it the better the quality becomes so we're aging the clay for at least two weeks so once this pallet is full we'll cover it with a lot of plastic to stop it from drying out we will then give it a number and then put it into storage and then in two weeks time it will be pulled out and it will be then hugged again ready for the throws so at which the emphasis is on quality of the pot and also the first peacefulness of the pot it would be a lot cheaper to buy the clay in from a supplier but we wouldn't be in control of the clay so I've got a truly a clay here from the clay room fresh up and I'm not going to weigh out some balls show you how it's done most of what we make is made by throwing on the wheel I got a threesome 14 pound balls once they weighed out we're ready to go we always so on that such a just bits of chipboard false wheel heads so we can take the pot off without damaging it the first thing to do is Center I'll add my craft with people who've been settled bottles of for generations so that's this is a very economic technique you don't do any work you don't have to and there's absolutely set number of moves they have opened out the bottom already made the whole house the first pull very little water just enough to stop the hands pulling too much but of course it's a lubricant so if you put too much on you know to work harder begin to form the rim this is quite a tall thin pot so they're harder work than the flatter ones because you've got a fight gravity and centrifugal force is always trying to pull it out the shape of the pot so this is the last pull to get the full height and I'll check the measurement when I got up to the top you can see is wobbling a bit you're forcing the clay I'll take that out in a moment those walls but as long as the rims fun just check the height all right well plenty of height there check the width kind of a set right width plenty of height so that's good now for base details we sometimes use templates this is a bit of aluminium carved app I'll just offer it up to the base and particularly if you've got a team with throwers it does give some uniformity we all always use rivers or ribs as they're called on the outside of the pot originally they would be in Maine from OC's ribs now they just put some metal it gives you a smoothness to the pot pretty well all traditional Potter's everywhere use them for flower pots is more practical have a clean surface doesn't hold the bugs so we're getting nearly finished now now I'm going to put a roulette on these are this is a easy way of decorating the simplest is just little marks but I'm going to use a more complicated one which is this which is a bit of carved clay with a repeat pattern on it and you rotate the plot slowly offer it up press on the sand down the bottom a bit thicker there's it go faster I take the pottery stamp which has got our name and address and the very importantly the year date I put that on the plot there you go one on a pot off lift it off on its back there you go so that's the basics of throwing a pot that pots finish now it's been decorated with a roulette and had its stamp and everything there are other ways of decorating the pot on the wheel as it's made and while the best of watch is the making pastry the principle is the same same three wheels this is one with a split rim as we call it so I'm gathering a piece of clay out of this just underneath the rim there so I can do some pastry work on it so always you've got three pools as they call three opening moves like many of my shapes this is a sort of traditional shape which we've adapted a simple roulette either side of the band that's some pastry and finally the all-important stamp so that's two designs but we've got a lot more than that in our catalog I think we've got over 250 lines some small some large most of our production is made on the wheel and we take great pride in the skills we've got here several of us have been throwing over 20 years I have done 27 years myself there was a set at 15 years to make a Potter and it's a it's about that block it's a very difficult process very simple very difficult and it's the job which needs the most training we've got usually between four or five apprentices at any one time and that is a very important part of the philosophy of the business here's Tim throwing a hostile pot which is a way for about 12 pounds of clay with they are part of the range which will be decorated the day after they be made well stiffen slightly and then we can apply decoration the largest pot we'd throw in one piece would be half a hundredweight 56 pounds is Andy throwing a large basket as you can see is quite a lot of effort involved and it's got I think 22 years throwing experience here and you've really got to know what you're doing before you take on 56 pounds of clay if you try throwing more than about half a hundredweight of clay at a time it's doesn't really work because you can't pull it up further than your arm reaches so for very large pots you'll split up the total weight into two three four how many sections you need to and throw them separately let them stiffen slightly put them back on the wheel and loop them together as an entirely separate process so let's see Tony doing that down just leaving a base in the pot now my hands have gone right down to the wooden board so I'm making a hollow cylinder we have to remember that it's been made essentially upside down and obviously as this area here is going to be the join we need to make sure it's exactly the same size same diameter as the base section there we are absolutely spot-on there so here I'm just about to join two sections together it's a two piece pot the pots need to be left to stiffen slightly before they join together otherwise that collapse it does depend on the weather but tourney's looks at them and they seem to be about right the next day this is the bottom section and I'm just researching on the wheel roughing up the edge so you've got maximum surface area apply the soft clay squibber which acts as glue make sure there's plenty on there this helps to weld the two sections together and now to add the top section throwing is a very ancient technique it's been in use at least 5000 years an apartment fact we use electric motors rather than kicking or pedaling we arrive in some way we're using exactly the same techniques as those first Mesopotamian potters used five millennia ago this way of working is our teaser and rather what some people might think of as craftsman very much a community working where you need other people to help you in the process and you all work together and a reasonable matter specialization and the final curve to the rim and then we add the decorative band again scoring the pot first to make sure it sticks on well this time we had a little bit of water and then we extrude the band through a die plate and at the final which Ford roulette so that pot was made out of two balls of clay weighing 40 pounds of clay this next part of Alibaba is made out of three sections - which weighs 60 pounds of clay so there's a hundred and sixty pounds of clay just in this one pot there's a limited amount of decoration you can add to a pot while it's still being thrown on the wheel if you want to decorate a pot we put it aside on the racks for usually about a day then it's stiffen up enough and we'll decorate with relief decoration of some sort if it's a shallow mold so you can hold it onto the wall of the pot and push the wall of the pot into the mold it's a demanding job needs a steady hand of color a nerve actually - because these pots are quite soft still when you start off training people you get some very strange shapes and weird things happening so other early years we've built up a enormous selection of moles and flowers and satyrs heads and swags and you name it this one's a hosta so that's a pop made using a form sprig molding adding a little bit of relief on the outside we also extrude strips and add them as basket-work and these are a perennial favorite I think the design as far as I know comes from Elizabethan times Pomona's basket full of fruit you see it on early wood cuts we got a version of it where we get in to weave these extruded strips gotta be very meticulous here's another variant of the basket flowerpot where we flatten the back of it all the way round thrown pot stuck a hole in it so you can hang it on the wall and for decorative purposes we're putting a nice twisted handle on the back again it's a variation very old design there are some shapes you just can't throw so you do have another way of making and that is hand pressing this is one of our newer ranges using very clean quite modern designs they work very well as plant as you'll see later on I'm going to plot one up this next one is a an Italianate pot based on a old Tuscan design we take a plaster mould which of course we originate ourselves to our own designs and you beat rather laborious ly play into the mold let it stiffen a day remove the mold and then bring the surface to life and a lot of fairy gives us the chance to make not only ovals or a clip shape at all square it also enables us to put much more decoration on and we'll be practical always interested in investigating commissions special projects only if you want your family crest but we can do that frequently do this pot is a ham house urn and it's a five piece mold I made it yesterday so the pot will actually shrink away from the mold and I just release the top sections away it's one of the Commission's that should we get from time to time to make specials this one for the National Trust in the 1980s based on historical reconstruction she's selling me joy doing these are come out of the mold as he sees an awful lot of work to do on them still once the possibly made and decorated that's only just the beginning they then got to be got through the process without cracking because these pots that was shrinking about ten percent as they dry and in the kiln so we have to be very careful with them dry them in fairly controlled conditions have to be bone dry for they going to kill no eyes we just blow them up so when they're absolutely bone-dry we pass them down and put them in the kiln for firing and the firing takes about 24 hours to reach a thousand plus centigrade which gives us the optimum color the optimum porosity because we want them to be porous enough somewhere about six ten percent but not so porous that they fall apart the frost of course and not so impervious that the root balls don't breathe so it's quite a finely judged thing so I hope that gives you some feel for what we do at Whitford pottery as you see we have a lot of fun both making the pots and planting them up don't be afraid of trying out new ideas with pots be bold it's not like a herbaceous border where you've got to wait for years a flower pot you can plant for just one season try things out which it quite outrageous move them around have fun you're always very welcome to visit the pottery you can see how the pots are made for yourselves and you can look at our show gardens as always lots of stuff going on here different seasonal plantings so look forward to seeing

Channel: Whichford Pottery

Views: 987,813

Rating: 4.8064427 out of 5

Keywords: Throwing, garden pots, flowerpot, terracotta, Whichford Pottery, Whichford, English, Potter, Pottery, Flowerpot, Flower pot, Flowerpots, Flower pots, pot process, How to, pot, clay, process, potters wheel, potter, making pots, ceramics, terracotta pot, mould, National Trust, Clay process, Warwickshire, Handmade, British, Frostproof, throwing pots, craftsman, design, kiln, garden

Id: 9ALR6QV0kkw

Length: 22min 56sec (1376 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 07 2012

Reddit Comments

[u/x12ogerZx]

I really enjoyed this, thanks for posting!

[u/prestonuofu]

Lorry load

[u/Akoustyk]

This is the kind of thing I would like to try every once in a while. I know it's probably a lot harder than it looks, but it looks like it would be fun to learn.

[u/slurmwich]

Really great video showing lots of different techniques. I throw clay on the wheel every now and then and can attest to how difficult it is and how long it takes to get anywhere near decent.

[u/bvillebill]

It's amazing that they can still make a living making garden planters, they must have quite a reputation and be able to command some serious prices.

On the other hand, as a potter it makes my wrists hurt just thinking about throwing that many big pots year after year, that's some hard work and hard on the joints. Great market for ibuprofen.

[u/[deleted]]

Good stuff starts around 5:00 and it's really good from there on.