How to Make an Ordinary Lid Extraordinary Adam Field

If there is one thing I have learned from making videos with uber-talented artists over much of my career, it's to pay attention to all the details. The details make all the difference in the world.

Adam Field could stop with his intricately carved surfaces and he would have gorgeous pots, but he chooses to go even further and consider every additional detail from the lids to the feet. And the pots go from gorgeous to exquisite. In this clip, an excerpt from his fantastic video Precision Throwing & Intricate Carving, he demonstrates one such detail (on one of the coolest lids I've seen!).- Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

This clip was excerpted from Precision Throwing & Intricate Carving, which is available in the Ceramic Arts Network Shop.

CLAYflicks subscribers can view this and all of CAN's full-length videos on CLAYflicks! Not a subscriber yet? No problem—click here to sign up.

To learn more about Adam Field or to see more images of his work, please visit www.adamfieldpottery.com.

Adam Field's Influences

While living in Maui, Adam Field was inspired by the symbolic patterns on Hawaiian tapa cloth, but he also looked at Zulu basketry and was excited by quipus: Inca messages tied in patterns of knotted cords in a base-ten positional system. While he describes his success at creating a similar symbolic system as more modest, his own pattern language references the rhythms in those artifacts. As he carves patterns depicting the kinds of flowers that surrounded him in Maui, he is not intentionally creating a narrative, but perhaps through the repetition he is recording his own history.

Both the forms of his work and the celadon glazes that he applies to their surfaces allude to Korean and Chinese wares. Though his five-pointed dimple cup form was inspired by the over-ripe guava fruits he found in the jungle in Maui, it also echoes the aesthetics of historical work. Most of his glazes, on the other hand, are well-known contemporary recipes that he has honed and tweaked. By changing colorants or cooling speed he has pushed them to suit his own work.

See the rest of this article on Adam Field's work and influences in the September 2015 issue of Ceramics Monthly.

Helpful Terms

Calipers Adjustable tool for measuring inside/outside diameters, as in making lids. Source: Clay: A Studio Handbook

Pottery Bat A pottery bat is a pottery throwing accessory that enables freshly thrown work to be removed from the throwing wheel without the damage or warpage that can occur from touching the pot directly. Pottery bats also make it possible to return a piece to exact center to work on later.

Throwing bats can be made from most any rigid material, but wood, wood composites, plastics, and plaster are the most common. Except for plastic, these materials are all porous so pots will release from them easily as they absorb water from the clay. If the material is not porous (e.g., plastic) the pot must be wired off before it sets up too much, or it will crack as it shrinks.

Rib Wide, flat handheld tool used to shape, smooth, and/or scrape clay surfaces; usually wood, rubber, plastic, or metal, either rigid or flexible, with straight, curved, or profiled edge. Source: Clay: A Studio Handbook

**First published in 2015.