Pottery - How to Center Clay on the Wheel

Hey, this is Janice Hughes of Evolution Stoneware Pottery and Hudgins Center for the Arts. Last night in class I had a request to do a video about centering with a little how-to chatter along the way, so I'm going to give that a shot today. I've got three pounds of clay. I think this will be about enough, a big enough chunk for you guys to see what my hands are doing while I'm throwing, so I'll give it my best to talk you through it. I apologize if I go too fast. First thing is get the bat moist. We don't want it wet, but just moist, and plop your clay down in the center. Give it a couple pats and turn on your wheel. I center at high speed and then get slower as we progress through the throwing. Get my hands wet, get the clay wet. First thing I want to do is press the clay down against the bat so that it gets a good seal. One of the worst things or most frustrating things when you're trying to center is if the clay just comes totally attached from the bat. It is possible for it to fly across the room, so I'm going to ride my hands down the side of this clay and really squash it down into the bat. Now I've got a pretty good seal to the bat. I don't think it's going anywhere, but it's still very uncentered. The way that I prefer to center is called coning. Basically, you squeeze in at the bottom and pull up, moving your hands toward the center as you pull up. You're going to create a cone of clay, and then when we push that down, all you do is you center the very top as you go down. So you're not trying to center this whole three pounds at once. You're just centering a little bit at a time. So I'm going to squeeze in with the bottom part of my hands and pull that right up. Now comes the part where we push down. I push down with my left hand while I create this retaining wall with my right hand. On my left hand, I place on the top of the clay using this part of my hand, this meaty part right below the thumb. My right hand, I use the whole palm. I wrap my fingers around. This hand is braced against my body. My wheel is raised up so that I can throw standing because it hurts my back quite a bit to throw sitting down. For everyone who's sitting down, you're going to brace your arms against the inside of your knee. I'm going to use my abdomen. So get this nice and wet. You don't want your hands to stick or you might twist a big lump of clay off. So bracing my arm here, my right hand retaining wall, I'm going to push down with my left hand. The clay has nowhere to go but out as it goes down. This hand, this right hand that's braced against my body is going to keep it centered. It's not going to let it ride off in an uneven pattern. So pressing down, my hands are touching each other. So now you see most of the top part is really quite centered already. I'm just going to skim off this little part at the bottom. Maybe do another small cone to get it fully centered. Keep that clay wet. You don't want your hands sticking at this point. Now again, pressing down with my left hand, meaty part under the thumb and my right hand full palm is the retaining wall on the side. Now how wide do you want your patty of clay? Well it depends on what kind of pot you're going to make. If I was going to make a bowl, I want to center this pretty low and wide because bowl is going to have a wide foot and flare out. Now on the other hand, if I was going to make something tall and skinny, I would do it a little more narrow than this. So first I'll show you how I would do a bowl. Probably move this sunglasses fell down on my face. Move it down something like that. Now with this, I would make a pot something like this. A nice big bowl with this low patty of clay. However, I don't like making bowls that much. I like making bottles which are tall and skinny. So I usually am going to work from something more like this. With that, I would make a pot that is going to look something like this. A nice tall skinny bottle. I hope that helps you guys and let me know what else you'd like to see. Talk to you later!