March 27, 2009
Wheel Throwing Video: Making a Multi-Part Altered Vase on the Pottery Wheel
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A few weeks ago, we posted a video clip in which master potter Robin Hopper went over some beginning throwing tips and techniques. We had a lot of positive response to that video from both beginners and more advanced potters, thanks, of course, to Robin’s great teaching and pottery skills. So for today’s pottery video, I thought I would feature him again, this time demonstrating some more-advanced throwing techniques. |
| In this clip from his full length DVD Advanced Throwing on the Potter’s Wheel: Extended and Altered Forms, Robin shows us how to make one of his signature forms: a thrown and altered vase or “footed parabolic vase” as he calls it. Once again, I predict that this video will appeal to beginners and more advanced potters alike. - Jennifer Harnetty, editor. | |
This clip was excerpted from the full-length DVD Advanced Throwing on the Potter’s Wheel: Extended and Altered Forms with Robin Hopper, which is available in the Ceramic Arts Daily Bookstore.
Buy the DVD!
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Robin throws the foot section of this vase upside down. First he centers a lump of clay with a wide, flared bottom. He uses calipers to measure and make sure it is roughly the size of the base of the top part of the vase. This wide part is the part that will attach to the top part of the vase. |
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He then opens the lump of clay to the wheelhead and pulls up a cylinder. He begins to collar the top of the cylinder in. |
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Eventually he closes the top of the cylinder up, as shown at left. |
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Then he applies pressure to the top and creates a well. This well becomes the foot ring when it is inverted. |
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Here, Robin begins to clean up the foot ring and flattens it out. |
