Free Hand-building Handbook for Ceramics

Do you want to know how to hand-build pots at home? Check out this guide shared by Lilly Maetzig

Ceramist Lilly Maetzig (@mae_ceramics) talks about her craft as a sacred and ancient activity that we seem to understand innately. We’ve been molding clay by hand for thousands of years. The slow pace of hand-building ceramic objects brings her a meditative peace and calm, as she creates simple yet refined pieces with a limited color palette and playful touches.

Set up your home as a workspace by using everyday objects and understand how pots are made by making a basic pinch pot, a coil pot, and a slab pot.

You can make ceramic pieces in your own home with minimal material and resources using three types of hand-building techniques: pinch, coil, and slab.

In order for you to complete some simple projects at home, Lilly has created this illustrated handbook with a list of everyday home tools and a step-by-step guide to hand-building methods.

Pinch pots are a really basic but beautiful way to begin understanding clay and how to make pots. You can then further your construction skills by making a coil and a slab pot, and learn to attach handles.

In this handbook, you will find Lilly’s illustrated fun home tools guide and her step-by-step methods for hand-building pots at home, including some extra projects to extend your skills.

By clicking the button below, you will find a file in .zip format in the Downloads folder on your computer. We suggest you download it on your computer and not on your mobile. Then you must use free software, like winzip, to open the file containing the Free Hand-building Handbook for Ceramics, by Lilly Maetzig.

If you want to learn more, you can sign up to Lilly Maetzig’s course Creating Your First Ceramic Vessel.

You may also like:

- Ceramics Tutorial: How to Create a Simple Clay Vase
- Domestika Diary: Lilly Maetzig
- Ceramics Tutorial: Painting Your Final Piece
- Creating Ceramics with Character, a course by Sandra Apperloo
- Resin Jewelry Design, a course by Mia Winston-Hart