Making A Double Walled Mug - AMAZING POTTERY PROJECT!

Hi everybody, this is Anne. Years ago, I used to throw a lot of double-walled vessels. I loved the challenge of creating such a complicated piece, but as much fun as they were to create, they were also very prone to cracking as they dried and shrunk. To increase my chances of success, I came up with some alternative ways to make them. In this video, I thought I'd share with you one easy way to create a double-walled mug. I'll share my best tips to avoid cracking and show you how I carved it. Double-walled pottery, as the name implies, is pottery that has two walls. It can be a piece with an inner and outer wall or it can even be a donut ring with a joined continuous wall. The piece we'll be making today is a mug where the bottom section has an inner wall and an outer wall. I started by throwing a bottomless closed form. If you'd like to see how I did this, check out the video link above. I also threw a small cup form and thinned out the rim. Let them stiffen up a bit and do not wire them off. My goal here is to be able to fit the upside down closed form into the smaller cup. To make sure the two fit together, I first turned over the closed form and held it beside the cup so the point was elevated off the ground to give it clearance from the floor of the cup. I marked with my needle tool where the two will eventually connect. I placed the closed form back on the wheel and marked along that point around the circumference of the piece. I then wired it off. Now I'm going to measure the diameter of that circumference using calipers. I put each leg on either side of the mark and tighten the bolt. I moved that over to the opening of the cup to make sure the rim was a bit wider than my closed form. I then fit the point of the closed form into the cup. I turned it around on the banding wheel to make sure the cup was straight. I then used a damp sponge to re-wet the clay and slightly push the outer wall to the inner piece to connect the two. You can choose to keep the connection point visible or continue pushing the clay together so the connection is hidden. Remember the bottom point of the interior has not been compressed, so I used the blunt end of a paintbrush to push down on the bottom center. I then smoothed the clay with the brush side. I put it back on the wheel and trimmed off the fat part of the rim and thinned and smoothed it. Now here's a mug I made earlier that's leather hard and ready for carving. I started by using the trimming spinner. I centered it on top of the rim then marked all the purple fifth marks where they hit along the rim. I continued marking those lines all the way down the mug using a bamboo stick as my straight edge. In between each line I hand drew oval shapes along the bottom section making sure to keep the top of the oval from hitting the connection point between the two parts and the bottom of the oval from hitting the bottom floor. I then drew triangles lined up along the vertical marks. Note that the top triangle is actually touching the connection point. I checked my drawing to make sure everything was lined up and straight then I used an exacto knife to cut out the shapes. Make sure you have a sharp blade. This helps cut down on jagged edges resulting in less cleanup. Cutting round shapes can be tricky as the knife doesn't like to turn curves. One tip is to keep the blade at 90 degrees to the clay instead of slanting it. It'll be much easier to make the turns. As you make your cutouts you'll begin to see light shine through and illuminate the domed wall inside. That's my favorite part. Once all the cuts were made I cleaned up all the jagged edges. There were some cuts where I didn't get quite a clean pull away and I needed extra shaving. A lot of the triangle corners still needed refining too. I then used a damp paintbrush and softened the inner portion of each cut. I then used a damp sponge to soften any sharp edges and clean away any schmutz. I also like to use my finger along the edges to gently round any hard edges. And there's that dome. So cool. For my design I steadied my hand on a grounded paintbrush and turned the piece on a banding wheel to draw a border line around the top. To echo the cutouts on the rest of the mug I used a stylus on the top part of the mug to essentially carve out portions of the marked lines. I started right under the border line and carved down through the connection point and into the top triangle. I found a long time ago that a continuous connection point to join two pieces is the perfect place for the piece to crack. By severing the connection point in several places the clay has more flexibility to shrink without cracking. I also carved through the top border line. Here's what it looks like after I've done all the carving. One more time, I just love being able to peek inside at that inner wall. Remember different sections of the piece will dry quicker than others causing stress on the entire piece. It's very important to let the mug dry slowly. Here's one I made earlier where I drew designs and painted each section with underglaze. I also added a handle to this one but I think it would work with or without one. The user can hold the piece along the bottom and still be insulated from the hot beverage. Because the connection points were severed through the top triangle, I was able to paint down into the middle domed wall creating the illusion that all of this is just one piece. Here it is all glazed and fired. I thought those triangles look like upside down poppies so I painted poppies surrounded by hummingbirds. I also debated about the best way to highlight the dome inside. Painting or glazing would be very tricky. Jim suggested painting just the bottom floor with underglaze and then not glazing the inner wall at all. Problem solved. Let me know in the comments below how you would have decorated this. Thanks to the newest members of our Little Street Pottery Research Facility team. If you'd like to join the team and earn a title, click on the super thanks button or the link to buy me a coffee. It also really helps us out if you hit that like button and subscribe to our channel. See you next time in the studio!