You Learn the Most Through Failure

making a large bowl is the subject of this video but not everything goes according to plan I made a few mistakes during the creation of this piece and I'll demonstrate how I correct these errors together with discussing some of my more recent aesthetic choices which have become very prevalent in the bowls I make I'm throwing these with two kilos of clay this is a high iron stoneware body although it does look a lot like terracotta I can assure you it isn't as of the temperature I fire to earthenware clay would just melt into a puddle of glass but before this stoneware can be turned into a pot on the wheel it first needs to be wedged this removes any pockets of air there might be and makes it one smooth even texture throughout I won't go into more detail here about this process as I've previously made a whole video dedicated to it which I'll leave a link to on screen now and down in the description below my first attempt at the bowl I had in my mind was a colossal failure there was a thin patch in the wall which caused the entire piece to spin unevenly and it just got worse and worse as I tried to correct it to the point that it began to collapse and at this point it's easier just to squash the piece and try again I'll leave this clay out on the workbench for a while so it can dry out and then I can just knead it back up like I did previously and it can be thrown with again attempt number two I want this piece to have a wide flaring rim and a relatively narrow foot I'll also be leaving enough clay in the lip so that it can be trimmed at the leather hard stage and a feature made out of it but first as always with every single pot thrown on the wheel the clay needs to be centered this is the process of maneuvering the clay in such a way that it spins in a perfect low lump in the middle of the wheel without any undulations although sometimes to get there we need to move the clay quite a lot first such as this technique called coning this is when the stoneware is collared up and down numerous times a process that helps align the particles of clay making the lump more even and the clay more plastic and easier to throw with it's sort of like wedging on the wheel and the difference it makes is profound although doing this isn't always necessary especially with pots you can throw with very soft clay for me that's my mugs and my smaller bowls these are pieces I make thousands of and I tend to throw them a bit more aggressively and as I make so many of them at any one time eliminating the coning process means each one is probably about 20 seconds faster to make although it does still need to be done sometimes simply by feeling how the lump of clay spins beneath my hands when it's been thrown onto the wheel the next step is to open up the lump of clay and as I want this bowl to have a tall foot ring I don't push down too deeply as I need ample material to trim a nice elegant foot ring from and it's easier to have more material to work with as compared to too little so I'm generous with the amount I leave in the base for any Bowl I make I leave the bottom of this initial opening nice and round as when making bowls you want the interior surface to have a lovely curve to it and if I flatten it out too much at the beginning it can actually really influence how the shape progresses from this point with the base formed I can begin to pull the clay upwards the walls of the pot must be wet for this as must your hands too so the clay flows unhindered without sticking to your fingers I lift the clay up by forcing the excess clay inward at the base and from the inside my fingertips are pushing out where that bulge of clay is both hands then move up together slightly staggered lifting up the walls of clay slow and steady movements are best you want to keep the rate at which you move your hands up consistent the same goes for the speed the wheel is rotating to you don't want to suddenly speed up or slow down as that will cause the rate at which the clay passes through your hands to change which means a certain part of the wall May either become thicker or thinner thus creating an uneven patch when my fingertips reach the rim I very lightly release them from the top and I also make sure to leave enough material in the lip so that it can withstand being stretched out without becoming too thin and splitting a thicker Rim also helps to keep the entire pot nice and stable as it's thrown whereas at this point if it was already really thin and sharp I wouldn't be able to throw the bowl any wider as there's only so wide a thin Rim can be stretched before it begins to rip and in this case like I mentioned previously as I'll be trimming the rim later once the pot is dried out to leather hard I need there to be enough material to work with with the shape roughly there I'll sponge out the excess water and slip and remove some of the excess clay from around the base which I do with a very old very blunt turning tool I then skimmed some of the wet slip off the outside of the pot as I'm going to give this bowl a quick blast with a heat gun just so I can tidy up the inside shape of the pot without the entire form of the vessel deforming As I push from the inside out I begin by using a sharp metal kidney to scrape away most of the wet slip that covers the curve on the inside I then switch to a much smoother plastic kidney as it leaves a slightly nicer surface with that done the pot can be wired through and the bowl lifted away to one side onto a circular wooden bat so it can be lifted up and moved around a bit more easily without having to touch the actual pot again it's a very simple piece at this stage but by trimming it I'll add a few features that hopefully make it stand out a bit more a few hours later I was also able to flip it onto its Rim this way the Bowl's thicker base could dry out to leather hard overnight the following morning the bowl has now dried out to what we call leather hard but this bowl has developed quite a severe undulation on the rim but I should be able to correct that fairly easily I begin by flipping the bowl upside down onto its rim and I tap Center it so it spins in the middle of the wheel you can see just how uneven the base is if I keep this needle held steady just above it it only comes into contact with the clay half the time but thankfully with some control turning this can easily be rectified essentially all I need to do is trim more off one side than the other and then at some point it should become absolutely level I hold the tool with both hands and tuck my elbows into my torso to hold this trimmer as firmly as possible and to keep it still in space so it only removes clay from the highest point and I can finally check if it's flat by holding a straight metal kidney on the base and you can see that there's no undulation in my hands or in the tool as it spins around which means the unevenness has been corrected and you can see now by watching The Rim just how much more evenly the part spins around now compared to how it spun around previously I need the bowl to be securely stuck to the wheel for when I trim a detail just underneath the rim so I brush a small circle of slip onto the metal and then place the bowl onto that once scented I squash just a tiny portion of the base into the metal and together with this slip and this sealed portion it should stay really firmly stuck I begin by lightly turning the rim and making it just a touch more sharp the sharper this lip the more the glaze will pull away from it like you can see in this cross section of a bowl I sadly accidentally broke recently and you can clearly see just how much the glaze peels back from the sharp lip which creates a soft gradient of color as the iron rich stoneware clay underneath begins to shine through next I trim a slight indentation just underneath the rim another detail to hopefully interact with the glaze nicely so it should end up looking a little like this I then remove all of the trimmings from the inside using both my hand and a piece of soft stoneware which I drag lightly over the surface catching all the Burrs of clay with the interior trimmed I Can Begin work on the outside of the pot I slide a sharp metal skin underneath it to separate it from the wheel and then the bowl can be placed upside down so that I can trim the base it's always a good idea to make sure the wheel head is clean as you don't want any chunks of clay embedding themselves into the rim of the bowl as that would be just another thing you have to correct later on now as I'm going to be trimming very close to the rim of this pot I'm going to use a spinner to keep the pot pinned down against the metal instead of using three lumps of soft clay to secure it all in place this allows me to trim right up close to the lip of the bowl you can of course just use your hand on top to push down with but I find I can push down more securely with this and use a lot more pressure and the slightly coarse clay isn't going to grind away at my fingertips which of course for one bowl like this isn't a problem but on the occasions I'm trimming all day long it does prevent some irritation and at this point using a spinner is a habit more than anything else on the outside of this pot I want to trim two distinct angles with the change in shape occurring about halfway up the bowl section of the pot which again I'll Trim in such a way that the glaze that's coated over it will interact nicely with it albeit very subtle this should create a very faint line on the outside of the pot like you can see on this bowl I fired recently once I've turned enough Clay Away From The Rim portion I'll secure the bowl in place with three lumps of soft clay this way I can trim the foot without the spinner getting in the way These Quiet features I've been trimming on my pots recently allow the glazes just to do something a bit more interesting on the shape its decoration really in a very subtle way that doesn't distract your attention away from the simple forms my pots have at this stage though these features are far more apparent but they'll all be softened by a layer of molten glass on the final reduction five pieces as I turn pots I keep my arms very still and steady often bracing one hand against the other so that my trimming hand is supported as it travels up as otherwise I'd be holding this hand freely in space with the only support coming from my elbow which is fine but we can do better so I connect my thumbs and move both hands as one whilst leaning my upper body weight onto my arms to help keep everything anchored I can't finish trimming the angular walls of the pot until the width of the foot has been designated recently I've been trimming the feet on some of my bowls quite differently so that they're totally straight instead of being made up from two angles this makes them stand a bit more proudly as if sat on a tall pedestal and it gives the pots a totally different appearance like this once fired as opposed to this which you'll see more commonly on the bolds I make I don't prefer either one of these but the straighter foot does do something in way of making the pot feel more sculptural I just need to be careful about how thickly I apply the glaze onto them as it tends to flow down these straight surfaces creating a thicker band of glaze right around the base which can make the pot feel a little bottom heavy in this case I felt that proportionally the foot ring was too tall so I shaved a few millimeters off it before I began to hollow out the food well as the foot on this bowl was such a thick expansive clay as I dug my toning tool in I felt that it was a bit sticky which can be a bad thing when turning as if the tool catches it can suddenly gouge away a lot more clay than you intended to remove and guess what that's exactly what's going to happen and I'll show you how I correct such a fault but until that dreaded moment I'll continue trimming the foot as per normal beveling an edge around the outside and making sure the base is nice and flat I hold the tool tightly with a clenched fist as the soft spinning clay obviously wants to drag the tool around with it and you have to fight that as best you can I felt like the foot was a bit too thick so I began to remove clay from this outer portion bit by bit as you never want to trim away too much clay in one go it's better generally to take things a little bit slowly and to remove the clay layer by layer as compared to trying to get rid of it all at once and it was here when I was trying to thin the foot even further that my tool caught and tore out a large chunk from one side of the foot so to rectify this I began by trimming down over this irregular area holding the tool so tightly that it simply carved through the affected area without letting the undulation that's there influence the tools movement I then took some firm pieces of clay and wet one side of them and squashed them into that indentation adding material back to the thinner side of the foot doing this is possible but if your foot ring is already too firm to begin with then you might have a difficult time getting the two to blend without any cracks forming as the two parts dry I then held a rubber kidney on the outside and really firmly pushed that new Clay on the inside down and into the side of the foot compressing the new soft clay into the leather hard clay as best I can I then lightly trimmed away any excess to get it to a roughly neater point and then I used a heat gun just for a moment to firm up that new soft clay and now that area has been padded out I can go back to trimming like normal thinning out the walls of the foot ring so that aesthetically it matches the Finesse the rest of the pot has although with one mistake already made I was a lot more careful with my trimming hereafter and finally once I was happy with it the bowl can be stamped with my Maker's Mark which always requires a tiny bit of tidy up as pushing the stamp into the clay causes some of it to displace the lugs of clay can then be removed and the pot is lifted Away by its foot which is something I only recommend doing if your foot ring is firm enough to take such a maneuver as if the clay is too soft you'll simply deform the foot you've just so carefully finished sometimes I'll very quickly dry the foot using a heat gun just enough so that when I pick the bowl up with my fingertips no marks are left and that's the bowl finished I think it's simple and the shape is going to change so much once it's been covered in glaze and reduction fired which should hopefully be happening soon as I'm gearing up for a number of firings of much larger bowls vases and jars thank you for taking the time to watch and as always I'll see you next week foreign

Channel: Florian Gadsby

Views: 41,491

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, pottery help, pottery how to, ceramics help, asmr, satisfying, maker

Id: qM7EVs0P1NQ

Length: 15min 38sec (938 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2023