Pottery Making Illustrated Articles (Simple)

Excerpted from China Paint and Overglaze, by Paul Lewing, published by the American Ceramic Society.

To achieve my unique surfaces, I add paper to the clay, as its extra-strong, green nature provides ease in joining and drying while allowing me to roll the clay into paper-thin sheets and cut it with scissors.

My artwork celebrates the small things we overlook and embraces individual differences.

Each ceramic artist featured in this issue, which focuses on surface decoration, has contributed a process that employs water in one way or another.

Illustrations of throwing wheels throughout history.

Berry bowls—they’re not just for berries anymore! My berry bowl sits on the kitchen counter year round, usefully cradling such things as cherry tomatoes, shallots, and garlic.

As a potter, one of my favorite things to do is reverse engineer interesting and unique forms and find simple ways to construct them in clay. One such challenge I took was with some old octagonal glass tumblers that I inherited.

I have been pushing what is possible with piping techniques and thick, frosting-like slip for the last 13 years while making artwork about desire, wealth, and power.

it was a way of working that I strongly identified with, and that I’d found my creative direction.

The covered trays I make are the byproduct of my stubborn need to push processes beyond the obvious in an effort to make complex forms that amuse me.

I choose simple forms for my pieces to balance the lavish decorations that adorn them. The subtractive nature of carving combined with the raised slip dots produce a rich, tactile experience that is just as significant as the visual one for the user.

This project is my take on what a soap dish should be. It is funky and bizarre, but fun and practical in a weird way.

I’m excited to share with you the handmade tool I use to create all my mug bases.

I study hundreds of photos I’ve taken of pots in museums and archaeological sites across the world, and I often find a new form that inspires me that I haven’t made before.

On the surface, my process for making test tiles may seem like a lot of work.

In this issue, we celebrate our love of tools and tool use. We showcase which tools work best for each project and introduce a few new tool hacks.

I typically think of a memory, something that brings me comfort, joy, or makes me laugh, and illustrate it using animal characters.

In the development of my hanging planters, I played with the idea of giving function to a hanging sculptural object.