Experimenting with New Bowl Shapes (Throwing & Trimming)

Every now and then you need some time to throw the shapes you've been thinking about, those that have been lodged in the back of your mind, but you haven't really seen in three-dimensional space yet, meaning you aren't entirely sure whether they're going to work or not. So that's this week, some playtime on the wheel, together with using the Russian tile bat system from Hartley & Noble you may have seen featured in last week's video too. This is a really ubiquitous tool, but it's relatively new for me and I'm finding a lot of pleasure using it. I attach it to the wheel via a chamois leather. I soak this initially, and then I wring out as much water as I can, and then it's laid flat and spread out on top of the wheel head. There are four small tags that extend over the wheel head, which means when the main portion of the frame is placed on top of this, it's held incredibly tightly onto the metal. Previously, I would generally throw a clay bat, then attach an MDF bat on top of that, all of which made for whereas this literally only takes a couple of seconds. You can then slot one of these tiles into it, and there are even other smaller frames you can put inside this which you can slot a smaller tile into, hence why it's called the Russian tile system, as it's a lot like Russian dolls that fit one inside the other. For the folds I want to make in this video, which perhaps have more of a focus on the interior shapes, I'm using about two pounds of clay for each piece, which is I weigh each lump out, and as these pots might have quite complicated shapes, I'm going to make sure I wedge them up really well. Truth be told, as a maker, there are some specific shapes that I've made thousands of, such as mugs, where I can get away using clay that's a touch under-wedged and perhaps poorly prepared, as when centering, opening up, and pulling up the walls, I can re-center the clay and deal with any of the inconsistencies that actually create problems. But with the pots I want to make here, I want to manipulate some of the rims to have overhangs or steps on the inside shape. These are features that are delicate and precarious, and will therefore suffer if there is too much irregularity, perhaps not so much at the throwing stage, but at the turning stage. This is relatively bad advice to give to beginners, but the truth is, the more practiced you become, the better you are at throwing with clay that isn't perfect, and during my time as a maker, perhaps when I taught evening classes for three years, for eight beginners at a time, once a week, this was when my skills improved drastically, as I was constantly having to fix the errors they were making. The bowls I'm throwing will all be similar to those I've been making recently. I make sure to dampen a patch on the bat, not soak it, as otherwise the lump of clay just won't stick. It should be tacky, not soaking wet, and this will really help the clay stick onto it. As for the bowls I'm making, in many ways, this initial shape is sort of like a rough blank, sort of like a hewn chunk of wood, that's set upon a lathe and then turned. When I throw the shapes of the bowls I create, due to their angularity, I'm not looking to throw the finalised form. This is because the pots I make tend to have a contrast to them. The exterior shape is not the same as the interior shape. This sort of goes against many of the ways you're traditionally taught how to throw bowls. For instance, if you're throwing a curved interior shape, more often than not, the exterior of the One mirrors the other. In fact, it's incredibly difficult, and perhaps more trouble than it's worth, to throw a shape where the interior is curved and the outside is angular and sharp. Instead, it's much easier to simply throw a form that's curved in its entirety, save for those small angular details around the rim, and then at the leather hard stage, once all the clay has really stiffened up, it can be trimmed and finished. This way, I can then turn the angularity on the outside without it affecting the interior shape. As the clay is no longer soft, it can't easily be bowed inward or distorted from outside pressure. As I'll be throwing the rims of these into quite particular shapes, I make sure to leave the lip relatively hefty, as not only do I want to throw quite a particular shape here, the rim itself will also be stretched out further. This widens the circumference, thus stretching the clay further and thinning it. Essentially, if you're you just won't be able to, as the rim will tear, as you haven't left yourself enough material to work with. And this, at the beginning, was one of the problems you'll encounter a lot, and this extends further into proper clay allocation on the shapes you create in order for them to actually be able to support themselves. For instance, if we take a regular bowl shape, with walls that overhang to some degree, it can actually be helpful to leave a bit of excess material in the bottom, in the width of the foot, to support the overhanging walls themselves, even if this is material that you will eventually get rid of. You can manage without it if you're careful, but if you aren't, or if the clay is overthrown soft and saturated with water, if the base is too narrow and you overhang the walls too much, they can simply collapse outward. And I'll show you an example of that later in this video. As you can see, I leave plenty of This simply allows me to trim a nice foot ring on the pots I make, but it also adds support clay during the throwing process, which means I can throw a bit more rapidly and with not quite as much care. Then, at the leather hard stage the following day, this excess around the bottom, and even in the walls above, where you see here, can be trimmed back and refined. And if you aren't throwing on bats, if you leave enough clay here, you can actually just press your fingers into this away. But the most important thing this extra clay does is simply support the walls above. And the way I think about it when I'm throwing is like this. The wider and shallower the bowl I'm creating, the more support clay it needs. If the walls are overhanging significantly, I centre the clay into an initial lump that's really flat and wide, as this positions the clay into the best place for me to be able to throw it into the correct shape. For this piece, I want to have a curved interior section towards the bottom, and then closer to the rim, I want a significant step, and then an upward springing straight section of wall. These are quite particular shapes with some harsh angles in them, and as the uppermost step will overhang so much, I gave it a quick blast with a heat gun from the outside. This stiffens the clay and lets me manipulate it a bit more aggressively, without the form potentially distorting, sagging and collapsing. As you can see, the lower portion of this piece is quite curved, but there's enough clay in the walls, meaning I should be able to trim a more exacting angular shape from them. By the way, when I do this, I'm not pressing down too harshly against the wood, as I don't want to scratch it too much. The other thing I do when working on bats is clean them before lifting the bat away, as this just creates a cleaner workflow and creates less dust in the long run. The bat can then be pried out, and whilst they do supply a tool to do this, I've found that this very blunt scraper, made by Monkey Stuff, does a wonderful job. As the bowls I'm making will have quite complicated shapes, by throwing them on bats I can just lift them off like so, without imparting any kind of undulation or distortion into them, which can happen if you lift them off with just your hands. I do often lift pots like this off the wheel using only my fingertips, but when the rim section is slightly more complex and the walls overhang quite significantly, there's a greater chance that the shape will distort if you aren't careful, which means this is just a slightly safer option when throwing shapes like this. Here, I felt something shift as I was throwing, and thus to quickly re-centre it, I covered the entire piece with some water, and then tightly clasped the entire shape, like so, to get rid of the slight irregularity caused by that sudden jarring. I think I essentially tried to pinch and lift up too much material at once, thus causing the bat itself to be lifted out of its restraints a tiny bit, but I think this system is still far more secure than the method I was using previously. The truth is, the last thing I should be doing is throwing pots. For those of you who don't follow me on Instagram, which is where I share much more of my day-to-day activities in the I've just come to the end of the longest glazing session of my life. It's lasted a month in total, and thus at the end of some of the days I just need to make something in order to do something different, and to create content, I suppose, for my YouTube channel. I've also been capturing the glazing steps for about eight or nine different projects which I'll be able to post about on here soon. This is why my videos here recently have been much more about the making process itself rather than seeing the process through to the end. But the good news is, with every single pot now dipped and tidied up, I can begin what will probably be about six or seven reduction firings, which means I should have the footage that will complete many of these projects, such as new coffee drippers, more material tests, my continued black clay research, and the conclusion of many other of the videos I've posted over the past couple of months. I think from a viewer perspective, you guys, an important thing to remember is that I'm not a YouTuber first. If I was, and this was my primary way of creating an income, then I would focus far more on experimentation with different types of metals and materials, as those videos always perform really well, as I think they captivate a wider audience as compared to those who are genuinely interested in the throwing and trimming processes themselves. I suppose as compared to other YouTubers whose income comes solely from doing social media, most of mine actually comes from the pots I create, and over the past three or four years, as both my prices have gone up, as has the volume of work I create, it's actually far more beneficial for me to spend more time focused on actually making pots, rather than investing time into creating videos, which means I should hopefully be able to reach my goal of owning a studio in London sooner, a place where I have agency in the space's design, and I'm not at the whim of a negligent landlord, which is my current position. None of that is to say that I don't enjoy creating these videos. I actually really love that process, and ultimately it's been how I've built an audience. This of course helps me sell work, which means that one really fuels the other, but it also makes it a really difficult thing to balance, as I think many of you will obviously have a style of video you prefer to watch, but the truth is I simply can't make those week in week out without hindering my output of other types of work that financially are a bit more helpful. The good news I suppose for those of you watching who want a piece of my work, is that after all this time spent glazing, I should have enough work for a few sizable shop restocks throughout the rest of the year. I have to say, being a creative in any field at the moment is difficult, as it sort of comes with this assumption that you have to have an online profile of sorts, which can mean you have to be a video maker and photographer, and it can end up causing you to split your time more and more between these two things. Many of the creatives I end up meeting, who have a sizable social media following, tend to have somebody who helps them filming and editing and putting the so-called content together. It makes a lot of sense, but with pottery it's tricky, as due to the process of making something, drying it, trimming it, drying it, firing it, glazing it, firing it again, taking so long, I'd have to have someone practically full-time with me, capturing these moments throughout the days and weeks and months, and thus in many ways it's sort of just easier if I do it myself. Anyway, it's an interesting topic, being a crafts person in the modern age. I think on the whole it's probably led to a decline in skill, as the lines between influencer and maker are blurred, and people might spend less time doing the craft itself, or they'll spend less time investing in their own skill set, as the need to begin putting yourself out there is so strong. I could honestly probably speak about this for hours. It's also a topic I'd quite like to write about in greater detail, but for now we'll get back to the pots on hand. I think on the whole bowls can be deceptively tricky shapes to make, and for the shapes I make that have tall feet and angular walls, so much of the initial piece of clay that I centre is left unused in the lower section of the pot, as again it has to provide the support for the rest of the piece. In this instance, the shape I initially centred was far too narrow, thus when it was opened up further and its walls were extended almost horizontally, I started to see a few weak points in the form where it started to slump. There comes a point where it's pretty difficult to save, and thus I came to the conclusion that I should just scrap this piece and start again. This is an important lesson when you're making pottery, the idea that you aren't too precious about the pots you make, and that if you spot a mistake, sometimes it's simply easier to scrap it and start again, but it also helps to be analytical and to be able to identify why the mistake happened in the first place. So if you ruin a pot, or you see it collapsing in front of you slowly, stop the wheel for a moment and think about why it's happening, this way when you throw the next pot, you can identify where the mistake originated, and what you have to do differently in order for the piece to be successful. In this case, I left the foot far wider as compared to the previous bowl, which you can see here, and this just meant they supported that overhang better, which prevented the piece from slumping and collapsing. Then, after the form has been thrown to the shape I like, I can scrape away some more material from around the bottom, but to be honest, it will just be easier to turn away this material later, it's just acting as supportive clay at the moment. The sponging down you see here is about as much as I ever clean these bats. On the whole, whether they're round or square, washing bats with lots of water is something you should try to avoid if possible, as it's this and how they're dried thereafter that can cause them to warp. You might notice that I haven't wired any of these off yet. This is because the process of gliding a wire underneath a pot can impart some very subtle movements into the object itself. So, given I'm throwing these on bats, I won't actually wire them off until the end of the day, after the rim section especially has firmed up enough and strengthened. This way, when I do separate the pot from the bat, the motion of the wire doesn't really have any influence over the clay, and so the pieces hold their shapes better. One thing throwing on a bat system like this can do is sort of change the way that you centre the clay, or at least, if it's your first time using something like this, it can suddenly feel very different, as the bat system essentially raises the height of the wheel head. This means that the way you brace your arms on the tray and connect with the clay is changed, and it can take getting used to. I think one of the reasons you see me throwing on the metal wheel head so often is because I like how the material feels. The metal is smoother, and I tend to find the clay sticks better against it, whereas if you're throwing on bats, if you don't wet them sufficiently enough, and they are a touch dusty perhaps, the lump of clay that you throw against it to stick it on in the first place may not stick down sufficiently enough, and thus is your centering, and applying force to the lump of clay, you might find that it shifts off-centre more easily, or it may even careen off to one side. I only have five bats this size for this contraption, but there's another frame piece like this which I can insert, and then I can use a smaller bat. It's a really brilliant system, actually, so a huge thank you to Nikki from Hartley & Noble for sending this to me. If anything, I need to get into the habit of using it more often, but it's also sad that I'm coming to the end of a making cycle, as over the next month or two I probably won't do much making at all, save for the content film for YouTube and Instagram. By the way, if there is ever any particular topic, tutorial, or step you'd like to see me cover in more detail, do let me know, as some of these techniques, even if they appear to be very subtle and insignificant, can actually end up being really fascinating to break down and think about in more detail. For instance, coning the clay up and down may seem like a relatively straightforward process, but when I made a video all about that specific step, a link to which I'll leave on screen now and in the description below, I ended up thinking about parts of that process that I've never actually considered before. It also helps to approach these steps and teach them in a way that's more useful. For instance, the tap centering video I created does a pretty good job, I think, of explaining a process that's often taught in a way that isn't particularly helpful or easy to follow. And that's one of the funny things with ceramics, I think, and videos like this that explain the process. Often it's the way somebody says something that eventually makes a certain idea or technique click with you, and it's for this reason that I often try and encourage you to watch videos by other makers, as you might find that somebody else's approach, or the way they word and show something, clicks with you better and makes a Now, the thing is, with all of the shapes I've been making, the throwing of them is only really about 50% of the work, and it's really going to be in the second half of this video where these shapes are defined into their far more architectural, angular shapes. These are the rough blanks, so to speak, and although I do quite like some of the shapes in their current state, they don't really feel like Florian Gadsby pots. But that will change, I promise you. The wheel itself is then given a good tidy up, and I rinse out the large chamois, just to get rid of the worst of the clay that's settled onto it. As for any of the bats I use, after being very lightly washed, I store all of them stacked vertically like this, in boxes where air can easily pass through to dry them out. Then, at the very end of the day, just before I head home, I wire off the pots and take them off their bats. It's now been about four hours since I threw these, and their rims at this point are leather hard. This means I can flip them upside down, which means their thicker, damper bases have more of a chance to dry out properly. I raise my knee up, and I brace the bat against it, and I'm using a very thin, sharp metal wire for this. Not the twisted metal wire one, that you may see me use more regularly. I make this change as the pot has dried out a bit, and therefore it doesn't need quite a significant cut beneath it in order to separate it from the was thrown on. I then place another bat on top, and flip the lot over. If the bat the pot was thrown on is a bit tricky to remove, instead of prying it off like I just did, you're left with a more even, flat surface if you twist it off, as if you lever it off to one side, you end up flattening and indenting one side of the bottom. So don't do this, instead twist it off, like so. I'm really excited to trim some of these, although there's a few I'm a bit cautious of, whilst I quite like the interior shape. The outside almost feels a bit too complicated for my liking, or perhaps it's just that the contrast between the angular top and the curved body is too great, but that will change after they've been trimmed. This is about as clean as I'll ever tidy these bats, unless of course I'm switching to something like porcelain. In this state, covered in a bit of dusty pink clay, they'll be fine. Now, at the moment these are still far too soft to trim. The clay here is really soft and sticky, but sadly I'm away the following day, which means in order not to risk these drying out too much, I'm going to have to wrap them up pretty well, as it's one thing coming in the following day and finding work that's all still a bit too soft, but can still be dried out and trimmed, but it's much worse if you come in and all the pots are far too hard to turn, as that's essentially wasted time and money. But, at least you can recycle the clay, I suppose. So, I'll leave these wrapped for a couple of days until I'm back, whereupon they can then be unwrapped and dried out further, until they're in the perfect condition of leather hard to trim. It's now four days later, and the bowls are pretty much almost ready to trim. They're a tiny bit tacky on the outside, and so in cases like this, I place them in front of the fan, rotating the pots regularly so it isn't just one side that's blasted, and I also change their positions from front to back. Essentially, this isn't passive drying, I'm not just leaving them there and forgetting about them for half an hour. Instead, I monitor them almost constantly, as it's incredibly easy for a pot to get ahead of you and dry out too much, which then makes turning it a real pain. As some of these bowls are really about the inside surface, I'm going to begin by turning them upright initially. I do this by placing the bowl onto a skin of slip on the wheel. It's tap centered, which dries the slip, and then the bottom portion is sealed. Recently, I've really tried to throw shapes that don't need trimming on the inside, not so much the straight and stepped sections, but the curved portion. I do check the curves though before turning them. I run my hands over that surface, and if I can feel that the curved shape isn't right or is interrupted slightly, then I'll have to turn it like I did this bowl. Thankfully, there was enough material in the rim portion I just gouged, which means I You'll find that one of the most irritating things about trimming the inside of a shape like this is simply getting rid of all those small burrs of clay that end up being left inside. I then use this damp sponge, which is very dense, to clean over and smooth the surface. You can sort of burnish with it too, as the texture on it is so smooth, and often, if I'm struggling to create a smooth surface when I'm turning, it helps if I wet the surface first, and then either trim over it or burnish over it. Now, another reason for turning the pot upright is that it allows me to feel the cross-section of the pot far more accurately, which is helpful as it means I can trim the walls that have been thrown slightly on the thick side to have an angular exterior, whilst retaining the curved interior. I'll shade in the parts I'll be roughly trimming away, but as you can see, by being able to feel the cross-section, I can be far more accurate with my trimming, and I can easily feel whether the walls are too thick or too thin. If I was trimming this piece in a more conventional manner, with the pot turned upside down, then I wouldn't be able to feel the cross-section of the bowl, and thus when I turned it, I'd sort of be going on information alone that I gathered when I first picked up and held the pot, feeling its cross-section. I suppose the danger is when you're trimming quite angular planes in the walls, is that you'll create sections that are either too thin or too thick, and if they're severe enough, this can lead to the pot either slumping or cracking, or well, a myriad of other mistakes occurring. Although naturally, when making shapes like this, there will be differences in the thickness of the wall, there's simply no way to avoid it, I just have to make sure they aren't too exaggerated. I can also begin to trim the foot when the pot is this way up, and throughout this entire process, I'm looking at the profile of the pot in the mirror that's sat in front of me. In a way it's quite helpful, actually, as I can see the profile of the pot I'm making, whereas when a pot is placed upside down, to some degree the way you perceive the form is changed, especially when they have rather complex shapes, like this. Once the pot has been flipped over and centred, I secure it in place by very carefully pressing three lugs of clay around the rim. When I position these, I'm not pressing them inward against the rim, as this can easily indent the delicate lip, which then creates an issue I'll have to fix later, so instead I press those soft lugs of clay downward, letting the clay that naturally splays out be the material that holds the bowl in place. Throughout this video, as I turn these pots, you're going to see chattered surfaces every now and then. This is when there's a slightly rough and bumpy texture on the surface. It's often patterned, and occurs in striations, as the trimming blade itself bounces, or sometimes it's even because the wall of the pot you're trimming is vibrating. Either way, with tungsten carbide turning tools, it's incredibly common, especially when you're working with types of clays that contain grog. Grog is a pre-fired ceramic material that's ground up into various grades and added back to the clay. It adds strength to the body, preventing it from warping and cracking, but depending on how much is added, it can also make the clay body feel quite brittle at the leather hard stage, which means you can't alter the shapes of the pots too much, such as gently squeezing an oval rim back into a round shape, as this can easily cause a hairline This clay contains about 10% grog, which means it is still quite flexible, but it's enough to cause the tungsten carbide blades to really chatter. Now, there's two important things to realise with this. The first is that if the chattering is really minimal, I know with the particular glazes that I'm using, that once this has been coated and fired, you simply won't be able to see them through that additional glass. Then there's how you look at tungsten carbide blades in terms of their function. For instance, I don't look at them as finishing tools. For me, they make removing material much more efficient as they're so much sharper and stronger, yet I absolutely don't rely on them to create smooth, flat surfaces. Instead, I tend to do that with dull steel tools or metal scrapers, as with grogged clays, these leave much cleaner finishes. I think this is worth mentioning, as some people purchase tungsten carbide tools with the simple ideas that it will make them a better turner, together with making the process itself easier, and unfortunately, I really don't think that's the case. Say you're a beginner, and you're just learning how to trim. If you immediately start to use tungsten carbide blades, it's sort of like learning how to drive, but in a sports car. Due to how sharp these blades are, if you make a mistake, it tends to be so much worse, and at the same time, you're working with a tool that's actually quite expensive in comparison. As a material, tungsten carbide is very brittle, and thus, if you drop the tool, the blade will shatter. The trimmers I use cost anywhere between £65 to £100 per piece, whereas more conventional steel looped trimmers are just a few pounds each. Essentially, I think it's really worth practicing with tools that aren't so precious before you move on to these. It's also worth knowing that these sorts of tools just aren't for everybody. The way they chatter the surface and bite against the clay takes some adjusting to, and it's simply not for everyone, and the notion that they make you a better trimmer is, well, completely false. If you gave me a really bad set of turning tools, I could still probably use them to trim a pot like this. It might take me longer, but it's very definitely possible, and thus, I think the biggest contributor to how successful you are with tools like this is experience. It's your understanding of the material and how you use your hands, ultimately, that's more important than the tools you're using themselves, as in most cases, tools are just an extension of your hand. I remember when I first started making pottery, all the positions you have to hold your hands in, or how you hold the tools, much of it feels really clumsy and awkward, but I just think that's being new at something. It's a natural sensation that gradually fades and is replaced by an almost subconscious connection with the tools you're using. Beyond that, there's how you connect your hands as you trim. Throughout much of this process, you'll see how I brace my right hand against my left hand as I turn. This adds stability to my turning hand as I work, and I remember having to actively think about this all the time when I first started trimming. You can see that here, how I connect my thumb against the metal of the blade, whereas nowadays this is a completely subconscious process. I never think about it, which, I suppose, just shows you how much muscle memory takes over when you're doing something you've done thousands of times. Now, there is one part of the pot where I can't feel the cross-section as I'm turning, and that's the base. Thus, when I trim this section of the pot, I tend to go quite slowly. In theory, as I know the interior shape is consistent, I should be able to trim this part down as deep as the walls on the outside portion of the footring. This means I can trim quite aggressively for a while before I get close to that point. Yet, throughout this entire process, after each significant skin, I'm checking the thickness of the bottom by pressing down gently with a thumb, looking for any subtle movement in the floor of the pot. If I feel it bow inward slightly, then I know that it's usually thin enough, and at the same time, if I'm able to trim this internal part deeper as compared to the height of the wall on the outside portion of the foot, then that means there's probably some more material I can trim on the outside part, too. I turn away this material as otherwise the bottom of the pot would feel very heavy, but if you are ever unsure, the easiest thing to do is to simply stop the wheel, take the pot off, feel its weight, and feel the cross-section, and then place it back on, if need be, so that you can turn away more. The last thing I do is burnish the foot. This smooths the stoneware and creates an almost glassy finish, and it's here where I stamp the foot with my maker's mark, and I pinch quite firmly on either side of the foot as I do this, as this prevents the clay from splaying out too much. You'll have noticed that I'm placing the pots on these very smooth, high-pressure laminate batts after they've been trimmed. The thing is, even leather-hard clay is still relatively soft, and if you place a pot you've just finished onto a surface that has some noticeable texture on it, such as wood grain, then that can quietly embed itself into the bottom of your pot. So, for the last couple of years, I've been using these HPL batts for one-off pots, and I tend to leave the pots on these until they've turned completely bone-dry, as to avoid scratching, chipping, and damaging the undersides of the pots I make. The general rule for finished bone-dry pots is that you can move them around the workshop, but whenever they're taken from one place to another, the pots are picked up and they're placed down very intentionally. In fact, throughout the entire creation process of a pot, or at least until it's biscuit-fired, this holds true, and the last thing you ever want to do is drag a bone-dry pot across a surface, as this easily damages the clay. The same goes for the pots at the leather-hard stage, as whilst they won't be as prone to chipping, they can still easily be scratched. You might notice on the foot rings of my pots, I trim them to have three very distinct angles. There's the flat bottom, and then to either side of this, there's a chamfered surface. I prefer trimming the pots like this, as it creates a really distinct finish on the undersides of the vessels, and it makes things like waxing the pot later, and glazing and tidying that up, far easier. As if the base of your pot has a very simple, rounded bottom, there's no clear line where the glaze has to finish. Thus, you're the one making that judgement, whereas by trimming a distinct line into the bottoms of these, I'm creating a very distinct choice as to the limit of where the glaze will be coated up to. It also serves a secondary purpose, as the chamfered edge is so defined, I can easily just glide a knife along it, the surface of the foot itself sort of acting like a guide. This makes tidying up glazed wear far easier. You may have noticed that the rim of this bowl wavered slightly on one side when sat upright, and thus to fix that, I turn the pot upside down and trim away the irregularity that's transferred from the rim to the base of the vessel. I then slip the foot and flip the pot back over, and as you can see, the lip is no longer wavering around quite as badly as it was. There is a bit of an irregularity in the rim though, and so to try and fix that as best I can, I'm going to slot a bowl into the opening and press it down. This should force the opening back into a perfectly round shape. This bowl looks like many of the others I make, although there's a very subtle change, and that's that the rim is slightly inset as compared to the angular portion beneath it. This gives it a slightly more enclosed shape, although I reckon I could have made it a bit more defined, angling the rim in slightly more. If you've watched the video where I made mugs of all different shapes and sizes, this is a similar exercise, not including this bowl as it's similar to those I've made before, but with the others it's a really good exercise of attempting to find new shapes that I can incorporate into my collections, and you'll have to let me know at the end of this video which one of these six shapes you like most. One thing that's always proposed to me when I show this process of trimming very tall feet on the bottoms of these pots, is why don't I throw them on instead? This is a totally legitimate way of doing it. You essentially throw these bowl shapes, but without all that excess clay on the bottom, then after they've been trimmed, you attach a coil of clay onto the bottom, then you can centre it and throw it into the final shape you're after. This does get rid of the tedious step of hollowing out the foot, which you can see me doing here, yet at the same time, in my experience, throwing the foot on introduces more issues than it's potentially worth, but that may simply be due to the finesse of my work, and how thin the pots ultimately are. By throwing the bowl with the pad of clay already attached to it, this means you aren't adding an additional step, which is the attachment of new clay and throwing it into the foot. With the method I use, it means there's a bit more trimming, but it means after this point, I can dry the pots out quickly, as I haven't attached soft clay to hard clay. As if the pots did have thrown feet, you'd then have to dry them very slowly wrapped up in plastic, to ensure that no cracks develop between the leather hard bowl and the softer clay of the foot. It's ultimately personal preference, but if you aren't so confident at trimming, throwing them might be easier. Just be aware that it comes with caveats of making the process take longer, and you introduce a potential weak point where cracks could develop if not dried properly. The other thing that can be tricky if you're throwing them on, can be making sure they're perfectly true and centred in comparison to the bowl portion itself, as if they aren't perfectly aligned or level, this is another thing that can introduce irregularities into the finished object. The final bowl I'm turning has a very sharp step on the interior form. By the way, if you're attempting to centre pots like this and you find they're just sliding around, it's probably because you put too much slip or water underneath them, and in this instance it's better just to remove some and try again. The step on the inside of this piece had me thinking that I could make some bowls like this with an optional lid that you can either use or not. I've seen some bowl forms that have a gallery like this on the inside, which you then slot a thick clay disc into. The disc itself is perforated with holes across it, which you slot flowers and stems through, with some water poured into the actual basin portion itself, to keep the plants happy. I've never made one of these, but it could be a fun project for a future video. Ultimately, these sharp features are there to For instance, the glaze should gather and pool on that inside step, thickening and intensifying in colour where it does, whereas on the outside where the ledge is, before the glaze floods over that, it should just gather up and cling on before cascading over, again creating some visual interest in the glaze, as compared to it all just sitting in a very uniform layer across the entire piece. I think it's this that you tend to see more and more as you begin to I'm not saying this in a harsh manner whatsoever, but it's natural at the start, for the aesthetic of the pots you make to be quite rounded from top to bottom, the rim too, and the foot itself, which aesthetically leads to work feeling quite glopular and heavy, whereas there are lots of small things you can do to simply build interest in the surface. This can be things like creating very small ledges or lips or lines, close to where the rim is, to create a point of interest where the glaze can seep into, to create some sort of variety in the surface. It's for this reason that I add those lines to many of my vase forms, as it simply creates a distinctive change in the object, and adds subtle visual interest to a shape that would otherwise be very uniform. It's a difficult concept to explain, perhaps, but I think it's something that comes naturally with experience, as you begin to gain a better understanding of how different materials, clay, glaze, slip, and I'm always careful when trimming very close to the foot here. If I remove too much from the base, it can cause the pot to dislodge, and so if I do want to trim the pot to be narrower than its attachment point, then that's something I tend to do after the piece has been flipped upside down. One thing I've noticed with many of the bowl shapes I make, is that I think in many cases they would make great lampshades. I can imagine it. These shapes put in thin porcelain with a This isn't a new idea, by the way, but it's another ambitious project that I should really pursue, even if it means changing my schedule and producing less videos. I know I took last week off from creating any films, and thank you for being so understanding about that. And of course you were, because why wouldn't you be? The truth is, for years now, I've been feeling a bit burnt out with social media. It's been my second job for years now, and I often think that if I Paradoxically, it's perhaps the biggest driver of interest for my work, too. It's the fuel that keeps the engine running, and I've also built so many relationships and friends through it, so I would feel bad giving it up completely. But I think over the next two or three years, I really want to get to a point where I can step back. Not entirely, of course, but for a long time it has felt like a bit of a rat race, and I feel as if I need something new in my life to spark my interest in creating these videos again. For those of you who don't know, I wrote and published a book a few years ago now with Penguin, and over the past year I've unofficially started book two, which I think ties into many of the thoughts I've had recently about social media and craft as a whole. But I'll be able to share more about that soon. I actually really like this bowl. In fact, I think all of them are a bit more interesting than what I had initially envisioned. The foot rings of my bowls have certainly become narrower with time, and I think it creates a sense of elegance and sculpture that bowls with a lower, wider foot like this lack. To be clear, on the whole when I make these sorts of shapes, I'm not really thinking about their function. They are, in many ways to me, more sculptural objects, in a similar way perhaps as the bowls that Lucy Rhee created. They're obviously bowls, but they are also obviously not to be used, and I think this is an interesting realm to exist in, where you're creating shapes that are fundamentally functional objects, yet you're trying to elevate them beyond that. I'm not saying all of the bowls I've just shown you meet that criteria, but a few of them certainly did. I'm most excited about seeing how the glazes react over the particular shapes some of these have on the inside, yet I can already picture how difficult some of these are going to be to glaze, as with these sharp lines and ledges, it's going to be difficult to coat the glaze onto the pieces evenly without it spilling and cascading off these. I know I said I want the glaze to do this, but that's during the firing, whereas when coating these in glaze, I need that process to be as even and neat as possible. The last step for these, for the time being, is wrapping the pots up in plastic so they don't dry out too rapidly. Anyhow, that's all for this week. Thank you so much for taking the time to watch, especially if you made it all the way to the end. I look forward to hearing about which shapes you like best, and as always, I'll see you next time.