How to Experiment with Pottery Rims and Discover New Forms Learn how to split the rim for interesting forms! S. C. Rolf

Pottery rims might seem like an insignificant thing to put so much time into when you are starting out in clay. Most beginning potters are concentrating so hard on just making a vessel that the rim is the last thing they are thinking about. Even more advanced potters can get into habits of making the same type of pottery rim over and over. Hey, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?

Truth is, if you really want to make pots that stand out and are a pleasure to use, pottery rims, along with all the other little details in a form, should be very carefully considered. In today’s video, an excerpt from his video  Playing with Form & Decoration, S.C. (Steven) Rolf shares one of the little exercises he came up with to keep himself from falling into a rut. Have a look–I bet you will want to rush to your studio to try some of these ideas out! - Jennifer Poellot Harnetty, editor

In this exercise, Steven throws a small bowl form that he does not plan to keep and then tries a bunch of different ways of changing up the pottery rim. The key here is that he is making something he doesn’t plan to keep, which takes away the preciousness of the object. Working exercises such as this into your studio routine will help you keep your work fresh and interesting!

For more great exercises to boost your creativity in the studio, pick up a copy of S.C. Rolf’s video Playing with Form & Decoration in the Ceramic Arts Network Shop.

Or subscribe to CLAYflicks to see Playing with Form & Decoration and all of the other videos in the Ceramic Arts Network collection!

**First published in 2018.