Six Essential Tips for Coiling Clay to Make Sculpture Learn about the beauty of coiling clay! Erin Furimsky

Coiling clay is a great way to make sculpture that is volumetric and curvy. Erin Furimsky is well known for her abstract biomorphic sculptures that call to mind microbes, plant forms, or the human body. Coil construction is Erin's go-to method when she is building these signature soft and curvy forms.

In today's post, an excerpt from her video Embracing Abstraction: Coil Built Sculpture, Erin shares six excellent tips for getting off to the right start when coiling clay sculpture. Even if you are not a sculptor, most of these tips translate into coiling clay pots too! Have a look! - Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

Subscribers can instantly watch Erin build an entire coil-built sculpture from start to finish on CLAYflicks! Not a subscriber? You can purchase the download in the Ceramic Arts Network Shop!

The Beauty of Coiling Clay

Coiling clay is an excellent choice not only for sculptors, but for functional potters who want to make uniquely shaped utilitarian pots. In this post from the archives, gwendolyn yoppolo shares two techniques for making ceramic spoons. Interested in going larger? In this post, Karen Terpstra shares her technique for how to make a coil pot using flat coils. And as we all know, with ceramics there is no one way of doing things. What works for one person, may not work for another. So here are some more tips for forming ceramic coils including the brilliant triangle coil technique. Hope you can mix and match these techniques and find the method of coiling clay that works best for you!

**First published in 2019.