Plates are Hard Liz Pechacek

Appears in the July/August 2025 issue of Pottery Making Illustrated.

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, and here’s what I find to be important:

1. Rise/Height They need to be tall enough from the bottom of the foot to the top of the rim to stack properly. If the plate is too short, the constant bumping is annoying and damaging to the glaze on the rim. It also feels better in the hand.
2. Glazed Center and Outer Rim I like to embrace some bare clay in my designs, but find that it’s an unpleasant surface to scratch with utensils and wipe when cleaning. If the bare clay accent is kept to the outer ring of the plate, you get the best of both worlds. I also like to sand the bare clay and foot ring to make it feel nicer and keep it from scratching the table or other plates in the cupboard. The glazed center is shiny and an inviting surface for service.
3. Quiet in the Middle/Action on the Edge It’s nice to leave the center unadorned so the food can be the star of the show (or at least a supporting lead). If the plate is too busy all over, it looks better without food on it.
4. Unglazed, Slipped Foot I love the look and feel of a glazed foot, but have lost too many plates from sticking to the shelf as the clay slumps a little in the kiln. By leaving the clay bare on the very bottom but accenting it with a slipped design I can avoid loss at the final stage and keep things pretty. 
5. Size Matters 10½ inches (26.7 cm) for a dinner plate and 7½ inches (19.1 cm) for salad works for most cabinets, placemats, and serving sizes but I can still fit a few on each kiln shelf while firing. You want them to be consistent or it is annoying to stack the plates in the cupboard and makes their role in serving a bit amorphous. If the salad plate is too small, it’s only good for something like a sandwich or a muffin. Sometimes people like to have a stack of 6-inch (15.2-cm) plates for this purpose and then it is referred to as a cake plate. If the dinner plate is too big, it’s annoying to store and starts to feel more like a serving plate. 
6. Weight Matters If the plate is too heavy, it’s unappealing in the hand. If it’s too lightweight, it’s fragile and feels scary to use. 
7. Slope of Interior I like a smooth, continuous curve inside the plate versus an angle at the rim and flat bottom. This shape stacks a little more consistently (especially when handbuilt) and allows me to be a little freer with surface ornamentation. 
8. Shiny Glaze that Doesn’t Craze Matte glazes are more prone to marks and look beat up quickly, while any crazing can quickly turn to cracks. 

As you make your own plates, you will find your own opinions about all these elements. None of them are exactly deal breakers. After all, there are plenty of plates in the world and most of them are perfectly adequate. The goal as a maker is to create your own most perfect thing—and in that pursuit, there is no substitution for time, trial, and error. 

Developing the Form 

Part of finding a plate design in my practice has been developing a technique in the studio that works for my practice. As a handbuilder, there is always a certain amount of variation from piece to piece and I embrace that. Too much variation can be problematic, however, so I have started tweaking the way that I put plates together and have come up with some cool tips and tricks to share. 

First, I roll out a nice, big ¼-inch (6.3-mm)-thick slab. If I want bigger plates, I’ll usually roll one longer than wide, so that I have enough for two. If it’s a salad plate, I can cut four from a big square. It’s useful to think about the size of slab because if you are strategic, you can avoid extra work. 

Smooth out the canvas texture and use pre-cut templates to cut your circles (I use a plastic bat for my larger plates) (1), then lay them onto pre-made bisque hump molds. These hump molds have the negative of my pinch texture as well as an impressed motif at the rim and these details will transfer to the face of the plate (2). You can make a hump mold with your own patterns and designs. Just create a low hump of clay and stamp, dapple, or carve your desired design (see Hilda Carr's article  In the Studio: Tools for Carving for carving tips). Bisque fire the fully dry hump and you have a very simple mold that you can use again and again. 

I usually wait to smooth out the canvas texture on the bottom of the slab until I have it on top of the bisque hump mold since I want to really push it onto the surface to properly collect all the texture. Once you have it smooth and adhered to the hump, you can use a textured pony roller to texturize the slab from above and trim away any excess (3). 

Creating the Foot 

To add the foot, I use a DiamondCore D-shaped hand extruder to cut a long strip from a ⅜-inch (9.5-mm) slab (4, 5). You can just roll a coil manually, but using the hand extruder keeps the foot very level. Score the flat part of the strip and set aside. 

Now, for the tricky bit: center the slab-covered hump on the wheel, score a circle for the foot, and attach the extruded strip to the marked circle (6). Then, use some water and throw the foot to the exact profile you want (7). This helps to firmly attach the foot so it doesn’t crack and it also keeps everything smooth and level. Tip: It’s helpful to have a sticky bat to keep the bisque hump mold from sliding around on the wheel head. If you don’t have a wheel, you can skip the throwing step and just use a banding wheel to attach and shape the foot. 

Finishing 

Next, lay a plaster bat on top of the foot and stick something skinny like a fettling knife under the bisque hump to pick it up without mangling the rim. Scooch your palm to the middle of the bisque hump, lay your other palm on the plaster bat, and flip the whole thing over so that the bisque hump is on top. You can then use your fingertips to pluck the bisque hump out of the plate and voilà! A nice, footed plate (8). Finish the rim with a rasp (9) and a sponge (10), let the plate dry a bit, then flip it upside-down onto a drywall board to dry the rest of the way without warping. 

There you have it! I hope this a helpful way to think about plates, develop your own parameters, and create a simple system for making consistent plates with minimal variation, warping, and trimming. Hopefully, you can use some or all of it in your studio. Happy plating! 

Liz Pechacek is a ceramic artist working and teaching in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She has a BFA from Indiana University and exhibits nationally in galleries, craft shows, and from her studio in the Northrop King Building.

July/August 2025: Table of Contents

Must-Reads from Pottery Making Illustrated

• Dynamic Plates
• Cuerda Seca
• Inlay Indigo