Making a pasta bowl (or two) on the pottery wheel | One Off Ceramics #handmadepastabowl

No matter how many pasta bowls I bring home, we always run out. At home, they are our do-all bowls for everything but soup. Today, I'm throwing a couple for the shop. These are pre-orders, and I hope to be able to ship them out as soon as I can. I started with one and a half pound of soft clay. I like to work with soft clay for simple forms, because it allows me to center very quickly and makes drastic movements. One of the most valuable things I learned in my first six months of doing pottery is working with the right throwing consistency. I used to hurt my wrist really frequently for working with clay on the firmer side, but now I can throw every day without hurting my wrist, not only because my skills improved, but also because I don't use firm clay at all, so I don't have to fight clay with my strength. My pasta bowl is less of a wide bottom plate, and more of a shallow bowl with a narrow foot ring, so I left a thicker base in order to trim that narrow foot ring. A plate certainly holds more food, but I think my preferred shape of a pasta bowl is a little bit more elegant and lighter as well. In my pursuit for personal style, at this point, I'm willing to diverge from what you commonly find in big box stores. I always like to reject the idea that a pasta bowl has to have a certain shape, or a matcha bowl has to look a certain way. I've been to restaurants in Japan that use very unique dinnerware and subware. Each patron had a different sake cup. At the end of the meal, each patron received the matcha in a unique stoneware matcha bowl. Some is wheel-thrown, some is hand-carved, some is hand-built. That, to me, reflected how much thought the restaurants put into curating the collection of handmade ceramics. Before shaping the bowls, I tried to get a decent amount of height. This pasta bowl will have overhanging wall. If I go wider from the beginning, the wall might be too thick. This pole right here is my favourite when it comes to throwing a bowl on the pottery wheel. It's a drastic widening pole that looks a little bit wobbly, but if you remove your hand slowly, it will be fine. For the pasta bowl to reach the width that I have in mind, from this point on, I will only use the rib to widen and compress the wall. I use two ribs, a soft plastic rib on the inside and a metal rib on the outside. This may be a little bit awkward if you're right-handed and don't use your left hand to hold tools often, but it's very useful if you want to throw bigger, lighter, thinner wall bowls with less weight. I'm trying to reach 8.5 inches across so that the pasta bowl will shrink down to 7.75 inches wide after two firings. I will thin out the rim and finesse the interior curve when I trim the leather hard, but when I throw, I almost can never resist the urge to fuss with this for as long as I can, as long as the bowl is not flopping. The first bowl always takes longer. When I make ramen bowls or pasta bowls, I like to make a pair at a time because I feel like it's easier to make them identical. It's really fun to stick them after trimming by the foot or by the rim when they are the exact same size. If you're in the US or Canada, pre-order is open for my pasta bowls and ramen bowls. My conservative estimate is they will take 30 to 45 days to ship, but I'm really trying to ship them out soon. A lot of ceramics is, unfortunately, waiting.