Creating Your First Ceramic Vessel

Creating Your First Ceramic Vessel

“Thank you so much for joining me on this course. I hope you have learned all the skills needed to create your ceramic pieces. I hope that throughout the course, you were able to see my passion for clay and I hope that you have that passion now too. Now it is your turn to start playing, to start experimenting, and just by finding the joy that clay can bring. Before I say goodbye I would like to remind you of a few tips and tricks to create your Final Project. First, you learnt how to set up your workspace at home and the materials you need to work with clay. Remember an important note about studio safety: you should always have a large bowl or bucket of water and a sponge nearby as you’re working to keep dust away- especially if you’re working in your home. It’s important to look after ourselves, and that’s why we’ve got to keep that awful clay dust to a minimum.

Then I gave you a brief introduction to clay and how to do three main hand-building methods: pinch, coil, and slab building. As always, don’t forget to let your piece dry very slowly so the clay shrinks evenly. Do this by loosely draping some plastic over the top of the pieces for at least a day. After that, we applied these techniques in making our Final Project: a vessel, exploring the use of slabs and dimension. First, we drew the design, finding inspiration from our surroundings, in books or online. When I get the idea, I like to do some general drawings of what I think might work for the shape. It helps me to identify what I like in terms of the form and features of a pot. Once you have a form, you have to make it bigger to create a template. If you have trouble with the design, I have attached a page of my drawings in the additional resources, in case you want to use them as a template. Then we started preparing our slabs of clay and, once the slabs hardened up a little bit, we transferred these drawings into the large slab pieces. Then came assembling our vessel. I showed you how I make my pieces - kind of like a pie - I take one side of it and use it as the bottom, then build up the walls, and lastly add the top layer like the lid. Pay close attention to where the bottom of the pot will be. It needs to be firm. Once the vessel is standing, you can decide if you’d like to add handles or spouts. I like to do it to give personality and character to the piece. Once you have everything assembled to clean up with a wooden knife tool and a very lightly damp sponge. Dry it slowly to make sure it all shrinks at the same rate - take good care of handles at this point! To finalize the process, I explained what a kiln firing is and also gave you some firing options that you can find attached in the additional resources. I also gave you some tips about the best and safest way of transporting your vessel to a kiln and taught you how to glaze your pieces. Remember that a keyelement of working with clay is the recycling process. So, by wedging unfired clay, we can reuse it in the future on all sorts of different projects. I hope you enjoyed the process of working with clay and had as much fun learning as I had taught you. Now it’s your turn! Grab some clay, make some pots, and share it with me in the forum! ”

Partial transcription of the video

“Final project So now we've reached the end of this Domestika course. I hope you've learned the necessary skills to make your own ceramic object. So now it's time for you to get your hands dirty and start playing. Before I say goodbye I would like to give you some last tips and tricks in order to make your final project. First I showed you how to set up your workspace at home and the materials needed for you to work with clay. Remember an important note about studio safety is to have a bowl of water nearby and a sponge to keep dust to a minimum. You should also remember to keep any clay scra...”

This transcript is automatically generated, so it may contain mistakes.

Course summary for: Creating Your First Ceramic Vessel

• Level: Beginner
• 100% positive reviews (335)
• 14328 students
• 4 units
• 21 lessons (3h 41m)
• 11 downloads

• Category

  Craft

• Areas

  Accessory Design, Arts & Crafts, Ceramics