Throwing on the Wheel

Throwing on a pottery wheel: this is an activity that I partake in most friday nights at the Multnomah Arts Center. When I first heard that you threw on a pottery wheel., I was really confused, but I have since learned that “throwing” actually just means using the pottery wheel to shape clay.

Using the pottery wheel is a super fun activity that is artistic, but no so randomly abstract that you could be confused. Unlike other art forms, when I use the pottery wheel the things I make don’t have some hidden meaning or artistic secrets that only other throwers could recognize.

There are really only four basic things to do when using the pottery wheel, and one of them is optionable. Centering, shaping, trimming, glazing. Trimming is something that some people do, and others don’t.

The first step to throwing on the pottery wheel is centering. Centering is by far the most important part of using the wheel, because if you mess this up, the entire pot is messed up and will look bad. Centering is really nice because it requires you to be forceful, and push on the clay really hard. If ever there is something bugging at me, or I am annoyed by something, I use centering the clay as a perfect form of stress relief. To center the clay, what I do is I put my right hand flush up against the side of the clay and push on it. With my left hand I make a fist, then put it on the top of the clay, and push down. By pushing the clay both sideways and down at the same time, the clay is forced into the center of the wheel. If at any time during the throwing process I push the clay off-center, I have to push in on the entire pot and recenter it.

The next thing to do once the clay is centered is to shape it. To shape the clay you have to put the wheel at half speed, which means slow it down so it is not spinning as quickly. To shape the clay I first cup both my hands around it, then push my thumbs down into the center of it. I continue to push down with my thumbs until it is as deep as I want to go. Once I have the hole of my pot I put one hand inside of it, and the other on the outside. I put my hands in the same space on the clay, so that if there was no clay, they would be touching. To widen and heighten the pot, I push out with the inside hand, and move the outside hand upward. This forces the clay away from my inside hand, and then up with my outside hand. If I am trying to make a bowl or plate, I push more with my inside hand, but if I am trying to make a cup or vase, I push more with my outside hand.

After shaping the clay, I have to wait until the next friday to trim it. I have to wait until the next week to trim because the clay needs time to dry and harden before it can be trimmed. The clay need to harden, because when I trim pots, I stick them back on the wheel, but upside down, so they have to be able to hold themselves up. The reason that I turn the pots upside down is that the whole point of trimming is to make the bottom of the pot nicer, and maybe even give it a foot to sit on. When I trim, I make sure that the pot is in the center of the wheel, then I attach it to the wheel by sticking it with four small lumps of clay to the wheel head. Then I put my wheel at full speed to make sure that whatever trimming I do is even all the way around the pot. To trim the pot I use sharp metal trimming tools that are like ovals and rectangles of metal, but just the perimeter, and no inside. This is a good tool because then I can push them against the pot and they scrape excess clay off of it.

After trimming, I wait another week, then I glaze the pot. When I glaze pots, it is super important to paint the bottom of the clay with wax first, on every surface that will touch the kiln shelf. This is important because the glaze is actually liquid glass, and when it hardens it will stick to the pot, but if it is touching the kiln shelf it will stick to that too. It has not actually happened to me, but I have heard that if your pot sticks to the kiln shelf, they hit it with a hammer to break it off, because kiln shelves are a lot more expensive than that amount of clay and effort. After the wax on the bottom of the pot is dry, I dip the pot in the glaze. I like to dip my pots in two different colors, because I think it has a really cool looking effect.

I really love doing pottery, and ever since I discovered it this fall, I have loved it, and tried to go every friday.

These are most of the things that I have made on the pottery wheel, some other ones are around my house, but I wasn’t able to find them all.


This is my favorite vase that I have made because it is shaped really nicely.


This is the biggest thing I have made on the pottery wheel and it is just like a big tub.

This is the best bowl I have made on the pottery wheel, and it is big enough to hold a fruit or a small bowl of cereal.