Throwing Tips For Small Vases

Hey everybody, welcome back to Matthew Kelly Pottery. I hope you are doing well. Today we're going to make some small vases. I have some pound and a half clay balls cut up over here already and I'm doing this in preparation for some gas firings I'm going to do and that is in preparation for a show that I actually have here in just a few weeks. Believe it or not, I actually have a real show like with other potters and customers like in a single location. I haven't done that since like November of 2019 that I've actually done a real show. I've had kiln openings here at my place. I've done online sales. I've done all kinds of things but I've not done a true like show show in almost two years. So I'm excited about that. I'm going to be, I think it's the last weekend in September, I'm going to be at the Mint Museum in Charlotte for the Potter's Market at the Mint show and I'm excited about that. So that's a great show. They have an amazing lineup of potters and I'm really hoping that everything goes well. And so yeah, I'm in preparation for that. I'm making pots for a couple gas firings I'm going to do and then it's time to get back on pieces for the next wood firing as well as some other things that I'm going to have going on in the near future. But either way, today we're going to be throwing some pound and a half vases, all different various shapes and so I know some of y'all missed the commentary on the last video because there wasn't any. At least I had comments saying, hey I love to watch you throw but I love your commentary. So we're back at it now. I've had a little bit of congestion as you can probably still hear but I'm going to do commentary anyways and so yeah because I know you guys like it and I enjoy it as well. So anyway, that's what we're doing today and let's go. I think I've explained this before but I actually have my wheel propped up on some bricks today so that I can sit down at my wheel but I've raised it up so that the the height of the wheel is probably my splash pan is probably just about the height of my belly button when I sit up straight like this. I kind of do that sometimes if I want I feel like I want to sit down and throw but I want to throw something kind of smaller in this sense. I never throw probably coffee mugs or anything like that sitting down but sometimes of vases like this I like throwing while I'm sitting down but I like to raise the wheel up so that I'm not bending as far over when I go to throw some of these pieces. So just in case you're wondering I am like I said throwing sitting down but I did raise the wheel up a bit just by setting all three of the legs of the wheel up on some bricks and like I said that just helps kind of raise the wheel up so that I can work at a little bit more manageable height while still sitting down at the wheel and because these aren't that large I can do that as well. If I was throwing larger vases I would not raise the wheel up because then I'd want to have the height away from the wheel so that as I'm working I can pull up a little bit easier. It already feels like there's an air bubble in the bottom of this one. I don't know I think I think there is one but I let's see what we can do there. This clay is a little bit stiff. It's clay that was actually reclaimed gas fired clay and it was a bit stiff and I ran it through a pug mill a couple times with some extra water to soften it up a little bit. The bat for this one is a little bit loose on the wheel so I'm being a little extra careful when I start out the pull at the bottom because I can feel the bat wobbling a little bit. I don't want to pull the bat up off the wheel while I'm throwing this because I've done that before. I can definitely make a mess doing that. Ruin the piece and make a mess by the bat flying up off the wheel. Yeah I haven't had any smaller vases in a while and I thought they'd be a great a great item to have because I love playing around with all the different glazes on these but also it's a great item to have at a show to sell because big ticket items are nice but sometimes at a show you like to have smaller items as well. If somebody is would really like to buy a piece of your work but they don't have a couple hundred dollars to spend sometimes it's nice to have some items at a little bit lower price point so that people can have options of what to choose if they still want a piece of your work but don't want to spend that much money it's a great thing to have. I just love throwing smaller vases too because they have so much more control over the shape and it's a lot fun to make some really nice forms with smaller amounts of clay. I'd like to come or pinch this in a little bit more but I believe that that neck is giving me some issues so I may not be able to pinch it in quite as much as I like. You either just have to do it very gradually because I don't want it to buckle. All right that's not exactly what I wanted but I'll take I don't have anything in mind that I have to get made out of these but I really enjoy the small and tall skinny necks but that one will have to do for now and we'll get on to making a couple more shapes. I know I've mentioned this before but if you ever have a problem with bats not sticking or not being very tight on your bat pins take a little bit of slip put it underneath the bat it kind of acts like a glue so that as you start throwing you can hear how loose that one is right now just from where it's shaking back and forth but as I put the clay ball on there and I center it it's gonna start to make that slip kind of spread out and acts like a glue that holds that bat down. It especially helps when you start to pull up off the wheel when you start to pull vertically on any clay ball especially if stiffer clay because if you start to pull up and you have a loose bat you can just pull that right up off the wheel as I was talking about on that first one and by having that little bit of slip underneath the bat you can really help that process and help that bat stay stuck to the wheel and you can really then grab a bunch of clay or at least pull a very steady pull without having to worry about that bat coming up off the wheel. So I do that quite often especially if I have bats that are a little bit loose here and there or if I'm just working with stiffer clay where I know it's gonna it's good when making taller forms or more delicate forms to have stiffer clay but then you do have to make sure you work on having that bat be stuck to the wheel and now as I go to pull I don't really have to worry about that bat coming up off the wheel I can just kind of grab a nice handful of clay and pull real steady and even all the way through the bat's not wobbling not making any noise and also not coming up as I start to pull up. We're leaving a little bit of extra clay in the top of this one because I want to try to make a a belly on the bottom of it a round belly shape and then pinch that top in for a nice slender neck and we don't have to do just like we don't shape the neck all in one pull we're just gonna gradually push out the belly here at the base shape that foot a little bit and I'm gonna clean the excess water off the bat and out now just gradually pinch in pull up at the same time I usually alternate between coning in like that and then doing a doing a pull to kind of even out that clay add a little bit more water just to the spot there that I want to pinch in and invariably just about most of the time it gets a little uneven but then like I said you can just take and cut that off I like to keep that cut off at least keep it running evenly because the more out of whack that gets the more out of control it gets the harder it is to make a tall slender neck if it gets out of whack too much pinch in a little bit more right here and follow that all the way through there we go I like that one that will turn very nice all right we'll do one more here on camera and then uh I'll finish up making these and who knows what else I'll get into today but uh either way definitely a uh a tip that I can give you for making a vase of any kind is to make sure that you get the clay ball really good and centered that's uh I mean you know they're you want to do that for just about anything you make but there are some shapes that you can throw that may not require you to center the clay ball quite as well as if you're making something intricate like a vase so something I've always learned is if I'm gonna make a vase or something that's delicate uh in in shape that I should really try to make sure I center the clay ball really well uh that gets of course harder to do the stiffer the clay is uh but also the stiffer the clay is the more resistance and the more kind of structural integrity the clay has which helps you uh making delicate forms uh so kind of those things combined if you do use a little bit stiffer clay and you do get the clay ball good and centered it'll be you're less likely to knock it off of center by making a little failed movement or something like that than if you have softer clay and you make a little slip up in your movement then you'll more than likely bump it out of center or knock it off center uh and if you have a little bit stiffer clay it's a little bit more forgiving in that sense because the clay kind of is resisting being moved anyway and also like said just has the structural integrity to hold itself up so there's uh I don't always enjoy throwing stiffer clay but there's certain forms certain shapes that I make that I really do enjoy it and like I said just getting that clay ball good and centered to begin with is definitely a big advantage and something that will help you if you're making making vases of any size and I especially try to do it when I'm making these delicate forms so as many of you have noticed I don't use a ton of water while I'm throwing either and that really helps because the more water you use the more water that's going to soak into the clay as you're throwing and make it harder and harder for that clay to stand up because you're adding that moisture to it so just between the process of throwing and keeping extra water cleaned off of the pot try not to add too much while I'm throwing anyway and then also like with these vases with a skinnier neck here I take my sponge and I just add the water where I'm going to need it instead of just throwing a pile of water onto the whole piece and that helps contain the water where I need it it is tricky to learn to throw without much water because yeah your your the tendency is for the clay to grab your fingers or your tools or whatever it is you're using but it's definitely a good practice something to learn to not use too much water it'll help you in the long run for sure and if you can get by with making the shapes and the forms you want by not scrimping on water then by all means do it it's not not necessarily like it's better to use less water if you can get by with using as much as you use but uh for me I know that a lot of the forms that I make it's definitely easier and better if I can do it with less water and that one probably could be cut off a little bit at the top but uh I think that one's gonna be okay just the way it is well thank you guys for being here thank you for supporting my youtube channel thank you for uh supporting me on patreon for those that you do thank you all for hanging in there while I was on a break and uh especially because it was unannounced I just didn't show up for a while but uh thank you all for your support and I hope you enjoy the videos I know a lot of you do and uh yeah I think the um the sale I was planning to have in September I'm gonna have to skip that one and just wait and do a sale online sale in September in October um but uh or uh yeah I think it was either uh no it was the beginning of November I was gonna do a online sale but I had originally had one planned for uh early September and I'm gonna have to skip that one just because I don't have enough pots uh to make that and I need to be focused on getting pots made for the show that's coming up in Charlotte so anyway just so heads up I'm not gonna do an online sale probably until the first of November uh but uh definitely be looking forward uh to one then and that may be a mixture of pieces from my wood kiln for wood firing number six as well as pieces from my gas kiln but uh anyway thank you guys for your support thank you for being here as always and uh hope you guys have a great day and we'll see you soon all right bye