How to Make Slab Built Mugs

Today I'm going to show you how I make slab mugs. In fact I'm going to show you how I make four different styles of slab mug. The first one is this one. It's the simple cylinder shaped mug. I'm going to show you this one first because the other mugs are really just a variation of this particular theme. So after I've shown you the simple cylinder mug I will show you how I make these conical shaped mugs. And conical shaped is just a fancy way of saying cone shaped. And then I'm going to show you how I make these tankard mugs. Now I've got to be a bit careful with these because they're still fresh, the clay is still wet. The tankard shaped mug, these mugs are just a bit wider at the base than they are at the top. And they've also got these little details on here, the thumb rest and the The last one is this bellied slab mug which has just got a nice curved shape around the side there. So if you like the look of any of these particular mugs what I'll do is I'll put a link in the description below so you can just click on the link and you can go directly to that one if you say if you particularly want to look at the tankard mug you can go straight to that one without watching the others. Or if you want to watch the whole thing you can do that and then just decide which one you like the look of best and and give that a go. If you like the video please do give it a thumbs up and do subscribe to my channel and turn on the notifications. Thanks for watching. So with this cylinder mug I'm going to use this template that I made. It's made out of craft foam and if you want to know about how I make these templates I'll put a link in the description below of an article which covers all about how I make the templates that I use. And because the template is a long rectangle the first thing that I do is I shape the clay into a rectangle shaped block and then I press it with the heel of my hand so that it's shaping it more or less into the shape that I want it to be eventually. If I just use a big round ball of clay and then I start rolling it for starters it's going to be quite tricky to roll it into a slab but also then you end up with a great big round flat slab of clay which it's not the end of the world but because you can always just recycle the bits that you don't use but it just helps if you are rolling it more or less into the shape that you need it to be. So I'm using a board it's a piece of hard board with some canvas stretched over it and as I'm rolling it I usually roll it a few times in one direction and then I pick it up and I either turn it around or turn it over or turn it so it's horizontal and that just stops it from sticking to the canvas and it also stops you from stretching the clay just in one direction and because it's quite a wide piece of clay and my rolling pin's not that large what I generally do is I'll start rolling it on a diagonal rather than putting it horizontally. You can see I'm changing the direction there just by rolling it on a diagonal a bit and the pieces of wood on either side they're roller guides and they're about five millimetres thick it's quite a nice thickness for a mug and the guides also help you roll out a nice slab that's of an even thickness because once the rolling pin hits the roller guides you can't keep rolling anymore so it gives you the exact thickness that you want and also it's the same thickness over the whole slab. Apologies for the slightly wobbly cam there I'm not quite sure what happened the the camera wasn't on the table but it does seem to have picked up a bit of a wobble from the rolling and when you're picking the clay slab up it it does stretch a little bit so you just handle it quite carefully. When I've rolled out the clay to the right size I take a soft rubber rib and then I run it across the surface of the clay this is compressing the clay it's doing a couple of things it's getting rid of the texture that the clay has picked up from the canvas sheet and also it's just compressing the clay a bit and aligning the clay particles so that it makes the clay slab a bit stronger because the clay has been really stretched whilst you've been rolling it out and then carefully lifting the slab up and then turning it over and compressing the other side too and then position the template on the clay and I use a when I'm cutting out the the clay slab I use a metal ruler and a clay knife and the important thing to remember is to keep the the knife at a 90 degree angle to the table so that the edge of the slab is also 90 degrees so it doesn't sort of slant in and the large piece of clay at the bottom I'm just going to put to one side so I can cut the base of the mug out of that later on and when I've cut out the slab what I do is I transfer it onto what you can see there that blue plastic thing that's actually just a chopping board it's an old chopping board and the piece that I'm lifting there that's actually a piece of vinyl tablecloth it's vinyl back table cloth and I like to use that to put fresh clay on because because it's vinyl on the back it doesn't absorb a lot of water from the clay but the top side there the matte top side is actually backed with cotton so it's vinyl on the back and it's cotton on the top so when you put a clay slab on it the clay doesn't stick to the cotton and you can peel it off really easily it's a good idea to have some fabric between anything too sticky so what I do is I cover it with a bit of cellophane or cling film or saran wrap or whatever it is you call it in your part of the world and I leave it overnight to let the clay firm up because when it's just been rolled out the clay is very soft and floppy and if you try if I was to try and make anything out of it it would just be kind of falling all over the place so I generally leave it overnight now the top edge that's the top edge of the mug and what I do is I take a damp sponge and I just smooth along the top edge of the slab because at the moment it's very square and it would be uncomfortable to drink out of and then turn it over and do the same thing with the other side and then once the top edge has been smoothed off actually compressing it with the sponge makes a tiny little nib at the top on the top edge which makes the clay slab slightly misshapen so I just cut that off and then I bevel the edges of the clay and now I'm not entirely sure what that little gadget is called I think probably if you google clay beveler you'll probably come up with something like that find something like that fairly easily and basically what it does is it just cuts the edge of the clay at a 45 degree angle so cut one side and then turn it over and cut the other side in the same direction when you join the two ends of clay together they will join at a 45 degree angle the clay is at a 45 degree angle so there's a bit of overlap rather than just trying to join two pieces of clay that are sort of butting up against each other at a 90 degree angle which doesn't create a very strong bond and with this mug I'm going to put a bit of texture on the on the design so what I'm doing is I'm just using the template there as a bit of a straight edge and I'm using a finger roller by MKM I think it is MKM finger roller just to add a bit of texture along the top edge but not too close to the rim of the mug so that it's not something you can feel whilst you're drinking and then I'm going to add a bit of lettering to the mug as well just a quote that I like and these little letter stamps are by a company called now I'm not sure I know how to pronounce their name so they're called Relyef that's R-E-L-Y-E-F and they are Relyef pottery tools and they're based in the Czech Republic and I really love these these letters actually I've bought and used quite a few letters clay stamps these are definitely the best ones because they leave a really clean letter impression and then this rubber mat here is it on the reverse side of it it's got the design a flower a floral design on the back of it and I've just put it in place and then I'm using a roller to press it into the clay now you can see on the actual roller there is another design on that roller which is some reeds I think but that's not the design that's being pressed into the clay I'm just using that to press the rubber the rubber mat into the clay to put a bit of even pressure on it and then after I've used the roller I'm just using my thumb to just press press in make sure that the impression is made a really nice impression and this little rubber rubber texturizer it's made by I'd have to check I think it might be Mako but you can use it for various different things you can use it for for adding texture or for adding underglaze designs so I'm just peeling it off and then it's got this is left behind this really lovely floral design which sort of works well with the quote and then I'm just adding an extra little bit on the end there because it wasn't quite long enough to go right the way around the mug and now I'm going to join it together two ends together so I'm just using a serrated rib tool there to score into the edge of the clay so that when I join them together it makes a nice firm bond so as you can see I'm just putting a bit of I'm just scoring into the other edge of the clay the beveled edges and then now because the clay is a bit firmer you can handle it it's still really soft enough to bend without cracking and to be able to shape it really easily but it's not going to be sort of flopping all over the place so usually what I do is I'll curve it into the right sort of position that I want it to be and then I add the slip afterwards you can add the slip before you pick up this clay and start shaping it but I find it gets a bit messy I'd rather just curve it into a nice cylinder shape and then add a bit of slip just before I join the two join the seam so just lifting it onto a banding wheel just to make it a little bit easier to work on and then just putting a good amount of slip on there just to make sure that it joins nice and firmly now that I've slipped both edges what I'm going to do is I'm going to join up the two beveled edges of the clay by pressing them together lining them up first and overlapping them a little bit more actually than the bevel than the actual beveled angle I just overlap it just a little bit more just to give you a bit of extra clay to compress together so line it up and then just using finger and thumb just to press it together gently and I just use I do it in stages what I do is I'll kind of compress it once and then go back over it again a few times until the clay is about the right thickness until it feels like the join is really firm and the clay on the seam where they are joined is about the same thickness as all the other parts of the mug so just wipe away a bit of that extra slip and then go over it again compressing it again just to make sure that the join's really a really good one then I use a wooden tool or whatever tool I've got available actually to just blend in the seam on the inside of the mug you don't have to blend in the seams on a slab mug I know that quite a lot of people actually leave the seam as a bit of a feature but I just I think it's just personal taste I kind of prefer it to be blended in and then I turn the mug upside down so that I can blend the bottom part of the seam that I couldn't quite get to from the top of the mug and then this is a platter tool it's just a long thin plastic tool which is can be used for making platters but it's also very handy for just getting down inside narrow pieces and I just use it to smooth out and take away any of the marks that have been left behind by the wooden tool and then once it's blended on the inside I go on the outside and I use a soft rubber rib just to smooth out any texture that's left over on the seam on the outside of the mug too then what you might notice when you finish joining the seam is that there's a tiny little nib at the top on the top edge of the mug where one side of the slab is slightly higher than the other and what you can do is you can just use a craft knife to to tidy it up if you want I just smoothed down the the area that I sliced or tidied up with my that's a just a small piece of damp chamois leather now I'm going to make the base of the mug now and I want to make sure that the the bottom of the mug is nice and round so what I'm doing is I've just put a beaker in there that's just an old plastic beaker that I don't use anymore that's about the right size I've just put that in there and then I'm just shaping the base of the mug around it to make sure that the mug's nice and round then take it out and then there's a few different ways that you can make the base one really easy way is just to put it onto a piece of paper draw around the base and then when you've drawn all the way around the base of the mug you can cut that piece of and use that as a template on your clay slab but there is another way of adapting this approach that gives you a really perfect circle and that is to use the piece of paper that you've just cut out and fold it in half and then I fold it in half again and then that gives me an idea of exactly what the radius of the circle is and the radius is the point from the very center of the circle out to the outside and then what I do is I use a compass to find out exactly how wide the base is and then I use the compass to draw a perfect circle on another piece of paper what you can do is you use the template to cut out your slab and then shape the mug to fit the base so just check that it's the right size see it all seems to be good then you can just use the paper template if you like but as I said earlier I quite like to use craft foam because the good thing about craft foam is that it lasts for ages and unlike paper because paper gets a bit soggy and tears quite easily whereas craft foam you can just use again and again and the other thing about doing it this way is that you end up with a circle that's very slightly bigger than the base of your mug which I quite like because it means you've got a bit of extra clay to blend in or to make into the base of a mug that looks a bit like a distinctive foot so just cutting the clay slab around the around the template and then that's my initial stamp and I tend to put that on before I attach the base because if you try and stamp it once the base is attached you can sort of squash the base of the slab then I transfer the base on a piece of craft foam onto the banding wheel and the reason I'm putting it on a piece of craft foam is because I don't want the base to dry out too quickly and the craft foam will stop it from stop the moisture getting drawn out of the clay by the wooden pottery bat that's on the banding wheel and then scoring the base of the mug and it's important to score the base and the bottom edge of the mug really well because you really really want that bottom to be attached onto the cylinder really well and then just applying a good amount of slip and then to attach the base I put I leave the base on the banding wheel and then I lift the mug on top of the base I just do it that I do it that way just because it's easier to sort of eyeball it and make sure it's in the right place and then make adjustments if it's not quite sitting right if you lift the base onto the top of the onto the bottom of the mug it's just a bit it's just a bit trickier to kind of get it in the right position and then to attach the base what I do is I just go around it with my finger and I just kind of compress the clay the excess little bit of clay that I was talking about earlier onto the base of the cylinder and then I'm just wiping away most of the slip that squeezed out tidying it up a little bit so you see what I mean if the base is just a little bit bigger than the cylinder then you can get a nice little sort of evident foot on the cylinder and then I'm just transferring it onto a piece of paper because I'm going to tidy up the edge there and it's easier just to peel the mug off the paper at the end so I'm just using a the clay knife there to go around and just cut away any of the base that looks like it's a little bit too large or a bit too chunky just to try and make it as even a shape as I can and then see what I mean about the paper you can just lift it and then peel it and the excess little bits of clay come away with the paper and then I'm just using the chamois leather the damp chamois leather again just to smooth out any lumps and bumps that might have been left behind by the the clay knife and just smoothing out the edges as well to just give it a nice finish and then what I do is I just compress the base a little bit making the base just a little bit concave and the reason for doing that is that when the clay dries what can happen with a flat base is that the bottom of the base will sort of bow out a little bit and become a bit convex and then the mug will wobble on the table surface so I just press it in really gently just to give it a little bit of a concave profile now the other thing that I do a lot of the time is I'll make a tiny little thin coil and I put it on the inside the bottom inside of the mug where the base of the mug joins in with the the wall of the cylinder I blend it in I sort of put it drape it around the inside of the base and then I blend it in so that it's really attaching the base of the cylinder onto the the base of the mug as securely as you can so I just put a bit of slip around putting a bit of slip around the join and then I'm just dangling that little clay coil in around the base it's a little tricky to show you exactly what I mean but I'm also using a stylus ball tool as well which looks like that and I'm just using that to press the clay into the corner into the edge and to smooth it out and then I just spend a while using the the ball tool just to to make sure that clay coil is properly secured and blended in so it's got a nice smooth finish on the inside in the video I'm going to show you two ways that I make handles the first one is going to be how I pull a handle and what I do as you can see I make a sort of a carrot shape with a piece of clay with a lump of clay and then with my left hand I hold the the fat end of the and turn it around in my hand and then with my right hand I wet the hand and then I just slide it down over the the narrow end of the the clay carrot and then just keep pulling keep pulling the clay and it gradually elongates and keep turning it and sliding your hand down and you turn the clay to make sure that the clay is being pulled out in an even nice even tube shape and then once you're happy with the length of the piece of clay then you can start flattening it out but in the first instance what I do is I just make it nice and round nice and long and round and of an even even thickness as I'm pulling my right hand down the clay I try and keep my pressure on the clay with my fingers consistent all the way down because what's what can be quite easy to happen is if you sort of release your hand a little bit early or if you're pulling too hard you can end up with a sort of a thick blob of clay at the end of the long piece of clay it's not the end of the world if that happens you can just pinch if it gets a bit fat at the end you can just pinch it off but it's easier really if you can just carry on keeping a consistent pressure right the way down and then when I'm happy with the length of it then what I do is I with my thumb and forefinger I just flatten flatten it out a little bit and sort of turn it around in my hand so that I'm putting in even amount of pressure on both sides to make it nice even shape it's better to have a handle it's a little bit flat if the handle's very round it can be quite uncomfortable to hold a mug so it's better to have a nice a nice flat shaped handle with nice smooth edges so that it's comfortable to hold and then just check it out and see whether it looks like it's going to be the right length and then when you're happy with the length then you can just pinch it off and then what I do is I just put it on a wooden pottery bat and let it firm up at the moment it's really soft and floppy and it would be really difficult to attach that to a mug so I let it firm up for a few hours and then when it's easy to handle then what I do first of all is I just wipe that there'll be quite a bit of sort of a slip that's dried on the handle from when I've pulled it so just wipe that off first because it's easier to wipe the the excess slip off whilst the handle is still hasn't been attached and then what I do is I hold the handle up to the mug and decide what sort of size is going to look nice on the mug and usually I just hold it up to the mug and then use my other hand the thumbnail on my other hand to make a little mark on the handle where I'm going to cut it so it's not very scientific I'm sure there's more sophisticated ways of doing it but that's the way I do it just hold it up there and then cut off the excess from the handle sorry about the camera angle on this this particular shot here all you can see is the back of my hand what I'm actually doing is I'm using that metal tool just to slice off the and then I'm just using the clay knife there to cut a little bit of clay out to make it a concave shape where the handle is going to join onto the mug so it fits on nicely to the side of the mug holding it up to the mug and just marking the points where I'm going to score the score the mug and then just using the serrated rib tool to score into the the handle and it's good to make sure that it's the handle's really firmly attached to the mug obviously don't want that to come off when it's being used and then a good blob of nice thick slip and then when I'm attaching the handle I just line it up as accurately as I can to make sure the handle's nice and straight on the side of the mug and then just I put my hand inside the mug and then I just press the handle on as firmly as I can obviously you don't want to squash the squash the the cylinder shape but you do need to make sure it's pressed on nice and firmly and then I'm just tidying up some of the excess slip that's been squeezed out and just to make sure that the handle stays on I make a tiny coil of clay press it into the join the top part of the join and then I've got a really tiny little wooden modelling tool that I really like and then I just kind of smooth it on and blend that tiny little coil into the join just to make sure that once the clay dries and the mug is fired that handle isn't going to come off and then I just use the the damp chamois leather just to tidy up any marks that might have been left behind by the little wooden tool and then I just repeat the same process on the bottom handle just on the upper part I just put a tiny little clay coil on and then just blend it on and then just as a final little finishing touch I'm just going over that little section around the seam where the handle's been added just because it can you know you can get a little bump there again once the handle's been added and here is the finished slab built cylinder mug which is now ready to be dried and then fired and then glazed and this is how I make conical shaped slab mugs this pink template here is the template that I use for some of the conical mugs that I make making arc shaped templates like this with the right dimensions can be tricky if you're doing it freehand so I'll put a link here to a video that I made on how I make conical shaped templates so the process is just the same as with the cylinder mug just roll out the clay cut out the slab using the template and then bevel the edges on either side of the clay slab using the magic little beveling gadget there you can bevel the edges just using a knife holding a knife at a 45 degree angle to the to the table but I just find it easier to use that little thingamajig and then the wide the widest edge of the slab is going to be the the rim or the lip of the mug so I'm just as with the cylinder mug I'm just smoothing that off just to so it's comfortable to drink out of and then just turn the slab over and again smoothing the other side and this is another way that I make handles is I'm just taking a little off cut of a slab that was spare when I cut out the walls of the mug I'm just using the roller guide there because it's quite a nice width for a handle I make the handle slightly wider than the roller guide so I cut one edge of the handle and then I put the roller guide down a fraction wider and then cut the other side of the handle out again just being careful to hold the knife up at a 90 degrees to the table and then cut the ends of the handle square and then as with the lip of the mug you it's I like to make the edges of the these these strap handles I like to make the edges of the strap handles nice and smooth so they're comfortable to hold so just smoothing the edges off with the sponge on all of the four edges and then I'll curve it into the shape that the handle is going to be when it's attached and just leave it to sort of firm up and set a little bit before attaching it just scoring the seams and then when the clay has firmed up a little bit just picking it up carefully and curling it round getting it roughly into shape before joining the seam and the process of joining the seam is the same as with the other with the cylinder with a straight cylinder just adding a bit of slip and then pressing the seam together then after I've pressed the seam together I just blend the inside of the seam as well with a wooden tool and then because this is a bit wider the the rim of this mug is a bit wider you I can fit a soft rubber ribbon there to smooth off the the marks left by the modeling tool and then again using a modeling tool wooden tool just to smooth away the what's left of the seam on the outside too and then when it's all completely blended in I use the rubber rib just to smooth out any marks that have been left behind by the wooden tool and then again what I do is I put it on another this is just an old plastic bowl that I've got that's about the right size for this mug and it's just to make sure that the rim is nice and nice and circular and that's just an old dessert pot that I've got that fits in the base of the mug too and this is just another way that you can make a base that fits the base of your mug really precisely what you can do is you can just put a little bit of slip on right around the edge of the base of the mug and then I put a piece of paper on top of the slip and just run my finger around the edge of the bottom of the mug and that will leave an impression on the paper of the outside edge of your mug and then you can cut it out and it gives you a pretty accurate template for you to cut out a slab of clay that's going to fit onto the base of your mug really well then I use that template just to cut out the base from a an extra slab of clay check that it fits the base and then again score and slip the edge of the slab base and also the bottom edge of the mug and with this mug because it's got a smooth surface and I like the shape of the the base I decided not to leave the foot ring as an obvious extra slab of clay and I've blended the blended the base in so that it was flush against the the walls of the mug I just went around a few times with a a wooden tool and just blended it on which just attaches the base very securely to the mug but also just makes it completely flush like a flush cone shape and then as I did with the cylinder mug I also added a little clay coil into the base around the join between the base and the wall of the mug too just to make sure it was securely attached and then using the stylus ball tool just to smooth it into place properly then I just do a little bit of tidying up around the base of the mug and then compress it a little bit on the base and then again just tidy up that little bump that can form around the seam of the of the lip and with this mug I attached a strap handle to it rather than a pulled handle and the process of attaching it is pretty much the same thing I just hold it up to the mug and eyeball it really and then make a little mark with my thumbnail then I cut it to length making sure to cut straight down onto the onto the table rather than cutting at a wonky weird angle and then just hold it up to the mug and mark where I'm going to attach the handle and then score both points where it's going to attach and both ends of the handle and put some slip on both ends of the handle and the mug and then position it make sure it's in nice and straight on the mug before I then press it nice and firmly supporting the mug on the inside and pressing it nice and firmly onto the mug and then wiping away the slip and then I add a little coil to the both points at which the handle meets the mug and I add the coil to just the upper side of the point at which they join and then just smooth off any marks with the little damp chamois leather and then that's it that's the that's the finished mug ready to be dried and glazed so now I'm going to show you how I make a tankard slab mug with the tankard mug the base of the mug is just ever so slightly wider than the rim of the mug with the tankard mug I also use a conical shaped template this is the template that I used for the cone shaped mug earlier on and that's the base with the tankard mug you invert the conical shaped template so the wider part of the template is at the bottom but that would look really weird that particular template would look really weird as a as a mug if it was upside down so with the tankard mug you just make a cone shaped template that with the curve that's a lot more gentle so that when you invert it the base is just a little bit wider than the rim and I'll put another link here to the other video that I made on exactly how I make conical shaped templates now the process of making this the the main body of this tankard mug is pretty much the same as the other ones that I've shown you so I'm not going to go through that step by step but as you can see just smoothing off the rim of the mug now with this mug I'm also going to add a bit of texture to it and I just wanted to show you that you can use the template the conical shaped template just as a guide when you're using something like a roller to make sure you get a nice even curve and also because it's curved because the slab of clay is curved I'm just using a roller to add some texture texture there rather than you remember that you use that sort of straight rubber mat on the on the cylinder shaped one it wouldn't really be very easy to use that on a slightly curving slab of clay so I'm just using a roller which I can kind of can gently twist it so that it curves with the curve of the clay you can either leave the surface smooth or you can add whatever kind of textured detail that you like what I do find if I'm using that roller you know that roller that I used earlier on if I'm using that on the slab I can find that it sort of squashes the clay a little bit and I sometimes need to trim the end put the template on at the end at the end of having put the texture on and then just trim the end just a little bit as well just to square it off and likewise I'm just beveling the edges after I have added the the texture on just because it can the slab can lose a bit of its shape whilst you're pressing down to add the texture to it I use the same techniques to join the seams of the mug that I've outlined before and I also add a base to the a base to the mug too and then once I've done that I with this particular mug I added a strap handle I add a little thumb rest to the handle and I also add a pinky rest too these are two little pieces that I made just a little bit earlier on and this is really how I make them I just get a little blob of clay a little circle of clay and then I just kind of pinch it until it's the shape more or less that I want it to be when it's being added to the handle the thumb rest and the pinky rest are really just small wedges of clay so once I've made them I just put them in position and line them up properly and then just use a modeling tool just to mark where I want to attach them and then just score into the handle and onto the underside of the thumb rest and then after that add a bit of slip to both sides put it in position and press it on firmly and then blend it on using a little wooden tool and then when it's been blended all the way around I just use the damp chamois lever just to tidy up the surface of the clay and then it's the same process with the pinky rest just putting it in position marking it out scoring and slipping and then pushing it into position firmly blending it in and tidying it up and there you have the tankard mug and the last slab mug style I'm going to show you how I make is a bellied mug to make a bellied mug I just make a simple cylinder shaped slab mug and then before I attach the handle what I do is I just put my hand inside the mug and I start gently pressing out the the walls of the mug I start at the bottom right at the bottom and just using my fingers I'm just going around and I'm just gently pressing out the clay now in order to do this it's good to wet my fingers a little bit not really soaking wet but just a little bit wet so that they kind of slip over the inside surface of the clay and don't stick to it usually what I do is I will make the cylinder and then I let it sit for a couple of hours I would say just to make sure that the seams completely set because when you start pressing the clay out you're stretching it again and if the seams aren't very strong then they can come apart the other thing that can happen whilst you're stretching the clay is that little tiny little cracks can appear in the surface of the clay or if there's any little air pockets or tiny bubbles in the slab then they will probably become apparent and that's okay you can just use your hand on the outside just smooth them over or blend them in once I've bellied the bottom and middle section of the mug out I just use my fingers and thumbs just to pinch and curve out the lip of the mug just to accentuate the curve and just not flaring it out too much because then it's just awkward to drink out of but just giving it a little a little curve on the lip and once I've attached the handle again I just go around again and just double check that the that the curve on the clay looks nice and smooth and check for any cracks too I hope you liked this video and you found it helpful if you did please do give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel thanks for watching bye