Opening Clay to Make Pottery Bowls

Video Transcript

After we center the clay we open the clay. Sometimes I call it making the donut and I just put my 2 thumbs together, wrap my hands gently around, and push my 2 thumbs down the center of the clay. That makes the hole in the clay that would allow me to put one hand on the inside of the clay and one hand on the outside and be able to pull it up which would be our next step. But right now we are still going to focus on how to make this opening bigger. I'm going to take my left hand with my fingers inside, my thumb outside touching the bat and I'm going to squeeze these fingers towards my thumb. I'm also going to put my sponge on top of here in case when I pull it the clay will get wobbly that just recenter it. Now I'm going to put a little bit of water down my fingers and I'm going to push towards the middle and back. I'm going to do that a few times and that is called establishing the bottom. The reason you do that is to compress the bottom of the clay so that it does not crack when it gets fired in the kiln. Now that clay is all set for the next step which is called pulling.

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