Pottery Making Illustrated Articles (Simple)

A large serving platter comes in handy for a variety of entertaining needs. My wife and I love to use them for family dinners and entertaining guests who visit the pottery. I’m especially proud that a

I have a long history of using sculptural glazes with frowned upon or, more appropriately what I call “use with caution” materials, such as lithium carbonate and barium carbonate. These wonderful text

Many ceramic villages in Japan are known for the durable, practical, and beautiful tableware that they’ve been making for centuries. They developed interesting and practical throwing techniques in ord

The dragonfly was always a beautiful and mysterious creature to me in my childhood. Seeing this rare insect, would certainly make my day! Dragonflies symbolize prosperity, good luck, strength, peace,

I have always admired images of ancient vessels from Japan and Korea that were constructed and decorated using paddles. Wanting to diversify my approach to decorating my own work, I recently started u

Before finding pottery I studied textiles and embroidery in college. The love of ornamentation, decoration, and attention to detail that I learned from textiles continues to offer inspiration in my ce

I first became interested in handbuilding while taking Gail Kendall’s workshop at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine. At the time, I was working mostly on the wheel with porcelain and I t

For me, one of the most challenging parts of making pottery is determining how to decorate my work. If the form is complicated, a simple glaze solution usually works best. If the form is simple, my po

A little over a year ago a happy accident resulted in my work going in a new direction. A painter by training, I had been using clay as a canvas for my more illustrative work until a deadline and an a

I grew up looking at Japanese lacquerware, which is now a source of inspiration for creating patterns and decoration on my work. Emphasizing pattern over form has been a motivating drive in my work. S

January is my favorite month of the year, although I’m not a fan of winter temperatures or bleak landscapes.

Pottery Illustrated's Placement of Spouts and Handles.

One of the characteristics of terra sigillata is the uniform opaque color created when it’s applied in multiple layers. As a result, this uniform color can flatten the volume of a given form or, conve

I’m not sure whether I like setting the table more in anticipation of the meal that’s about to come or for the act of assembling pieces from my ceramic collection as a whole.

If an absorbent organic material such as cotton fiber or woven fabric is dipped into slip (liquid clay) and then fired in a kiln, the organics burn away, but what is left can still resemble the origin

A few summers ago I was at a wood-fire residency at Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. While there, I came across a tool that I had never seen before. The unique design and many uses of this harp

Pricing is a subject that many potters find confusing, especially new sellers. It’s not supposed to be easy, and there’s no formula. Proper pricing can be figured out over time. This is my approach.

A finished, slab-constructed form has distinctive characteristics, the result of a methodical process that moves from concept and scale drawings to the designing of templates and finally the engineeri

I gravitated toward handbuilding techniques during undergraduate school, discovering that they were the best choices for the forms I wanted to make. Inspiration for my pots comes from a variety of sou

My work is heavily influenced by the abundance of disposable items that I’m exposed to on a daily basis. I use textures and shapes transferred from disposable or single-use materials such as cardboard