Pottery Making Illustrated Articles (Simple)

This project is the perfect introduction to carving. A single tile would make a great trivet, or arrange a few to create a piece of wall art.

Plates are hard! Deceptively so (as anyone who’s tried can tell you). It’s taken me about ten years of experimentation to finally arrive at a solid, straightforward design and technique.

While there are infinite ways to make them, with a box-form lid or a gallery-type lid, the following is how I handbuild them with an inset gallery lid.

This bowl, in my Caldera Series, is one of my favorite forms. When I get the curve of the walls and the edge cut and textured just right, paired with the curved bottom, it strikes a beautiful tone.

In the world of custom pottery, the relationship between the potter and their clients goes beyond just delivering a finished product.

I love experimenting with new tools and discovering new ways to achieve a particular look or effect.

Whether using a found object, grinding down hacksaw blades, cutting out your own shapes from clay and bisque firing them, or laser cutting your own tools from pressboard, you need a hard edge to make a crisp impression

While adhering to the bounds set by defining components of pots, I feel the freedom to create work that makes their functionality plausible, but more secondary in consideration.

I am really inspired by the ceramics community as a whole. Besides being great artists, I feel that clay people are just really good people and super fun to be around.

Swap out the standard X-Acto blade for more complex blades to make different marks and cuts in clay.

If I know one thing about ceramic artists, it is that we’ll use a tool until it nearly dies, then we’ll rebuild it to live another life. It is one of our many superpowers.

Careful consideration must be given to its capacity for serving, the expansion and straining of tea leaves, heat retention, the comfort of the handle, the fit of the lid, its balance when tilted, the quality of its pour, and its ability to be cleaned.

When making work for an atmospheric firing, the unpredictable variations that the kiln can produce are my primary inspiration for surface and form.

I draw inspiration from many sources. Growing up in the Midwest, I’m influenced by rural landscapes and Rust Belt city infrastructure.

Making one of these teapots is a labor of love. When I schedule time for making them, I ensure that I have a series of at least four consecutive days in the studio.

The wide, strap-style handle provides comfort, despite the torque of a tall mug. And, the full-ceramic construction (at least with the mid-fire clay and glaze we use) allows drinks to be reheated in a microwave.

These cups are an exploration into echoing those qualities of glass in clay. It is the precision of the trimming on this pot that gives it a clean, glass-like aesthetic.

One meal I find I often make for guests is rice bowls. They are incredibly versatile and filling. I use cereal/soup bowls to serve them as the wide rims hold all the ingredients without overflowing the width of the rim.