Pottery Making Illustrated Articles (Simple)

After 24 years of teaching, I’m increasingly motivated to share what I know and emphasize that teaching IS learning. I encourage and expect peer teaching in my high-school studio classroom and love to

My pieces capture a thought process, or intention, that’s unique to my experience as it’s being created. The design captures my consciousness and allows me to materialize it while in the process of cr

As potters, our products should exhibit economy and spontaneity in form and decoration through intelligent use of mind, eye, and hand. Bowls for holding should nestle in the hand. For mixing, they sho

I first learned about yunomis from a postcard I picked up for the ClayAkar “Yunomi Invitational.” I placed that card on my studio wall at The University of Mississippi where I attended graduate school

Testing standards are important to both the studio artist and his or her customers. While we may give specific instructions on the care, handling, and durability of our work, the truth is those tips c

Glaze overlaps can extend your glaze library dramatically. Two glazes (A and B) can yield six different surfaces if you add the four overlaps: A over B (A/B) and its inverse (B/A), as well as self ove

Baking in the microwave oven is quick and convenient, but it isn’t the same as baking in a conventional oven. Because a microwave oven heats the water in food, steam can build up quickly in the food b

When I was an undergraduate student (those super nerdy days when I spent all my time in the ceramic studio), one of my professors had enough belief in my abilities to recommend I become a TA.

Slips and engobes are more or less the same thing, and some confusion exists over the use of the two words. Slips are predominantly liquefied clay; they usually are applied on wet to dry greenware.

Since I’ve been investigating pottery forms for microwave use, I’ve found that a microwaved egg is a common breakfast, and a pot specifically for microwaving one egg is a popular item. There are whole

Pottery Illustrated's Stamping Bands for Rims, created by Robin Ouellette.

Rome is the Eternal City, where layers of history emerge endlessly in the shape of ancient arches, decorated columns, frescoed walls, and in a more domestic size as pots, shards, and fragments. Magnif

One of the satisfactions that I get from teaching pottery classes and workshops is when my students challenge me to come up with fun, easy, and creative clay projects to construct in class. In doing s

While examining the evolution of my ceramic work over the past few years, it’s very easy for me to trace a stylistic shift in my ceramic work back to my love of quilting patterns and Islamic tilework.

I began my ceramic arts career as a thrower making functional wares, beginning with my first pottery class years ago in Colorado. Porcelain was my clay of choice, and my goal was to get thinner, highe

Sometimes a commercial underglaze straight from the container is exactly the color you need. But what happens when it isn’t? What if mahogany brown is the right color, but not the right value?

After years of enjoying washing fruit in a handmade, thrown berry bowl, I thought it would be a fun challenge to create an updated version of this form. Often, I find myself needing an extra hand in t

There is more than one way to approach drawing and painting on clay. You can think about it in terms of imposing and relinquishing control. In one approach, the artist intuitively responds to the surf

Wish you had an extruder for a few projects here and there, but don’t need one for full-time use? If you’re going to use your extruder mostly for coils, handles, and other small, solid forms, you don’

Ideas for art making don’t always come out of the blue; often they’re developed from visual, contextual, and material investigation.