Throwing, my happy place

Throwing is a skill, learnt through repetitive practice. Muscle memory allows your hands to remember and know what to do once you have learnt the technique. But for me, it is still an action that requires concentration, hard work and judgement.

 The feeling of throwing is something that I love. While it is only a relatively short part of the making process, it is definitely my favourite. It’s a very immediate act of creation, making something useful (I tend to make functional objects) directly from a ball of clay. People talk about it being magical to watch, and it’s even more exciting to be able to do it myself. Usually. Of course, there are mistakes.

 I think that in becoming a potter you learn that it’s OK to throw away (or more accurately, recycle) pots that aren’t as you intended them while working at the wheel. The first part of throwing, once the clay is prepared, is to centre the clay, after it is stuck to the wheel head, or wooden batt. And this is where the problems can begin. It might not stick properly or it might not be centred correctly; an off centre ball of clay is not going to make a round pot. And then you can move your fingers together too quickly, and the wall can be of varying thicknesses. Or the clay can be too wet and collapse. The problems are never ending. Such jeopardy!

 I must have cut through hundreds of them by now, to get feedback about the thickness of the walls before scrunching it all up in a ball, kneading it (contrast this with wedging clay, see note below ¹) and starting again. The clay often behaves better the second time that you throw with it, so there are positives! It is possible to recycle clay up until the point that it enters the kiln, so occasionally whole pieces which I have looked at again, later, and have found them wanting, are first dried out, broken into manageable chunks and then put in a bucket to slake down to slurry, as part of the recycling process. Once it is decorated or becomes ceramic, then recycling is not possible in the same way.

 Often my throwing improves over the course of a day’s throwing. I guess my hands warm up and I become familiar with the shape that I am making. So I tend to throw in batches to capitalize on this slight efficiency.

 You just can’t be too precious about what you are making on the wheel. I’m not looking for perfection anyway – that would potentially make the object lifeless, and not tell the story that I would like to about how it was made. After all, if someone wants a ‘perfect’ mug then they can go to the supermarket and buy one for much less money! But certainly in our house, these perfect mugs are not the ones that we chose to use. They are disappointing as you just can’t have a relationship with them. Although I must say that the one with the photo of my children which was a Mothers Day gift is delightful. But that’s because of the emotional meaning of it, not the mug itself.

 Throwing is part is the craft of the maker. I have read a book recently called ‘The Craftsman’ ². It’s a tricky read, not for the faint hearted, but the ideas in it have been helpful to me in thinking about what I do. The author, Richard Sennet talks about the years of practice required in order to become an expert craftsman, and I readily adhere to his thoughts about this. It has taken me years of practice to become as competent as I am at making pottery. And of course, I think that there is a long way to go – particularly when thinking about bigger pots. As pots get bigger, there is just so much more clay to have to deal with, and to have truthfulness in expression means that it’s so important not to mess around with the making process too much – to do as little as possible to both be time efficient (so important when thinking about costs, time is money after all!) and to retain the energy in the pots.

 Slowly but surely, I have increased the volume of clay that I can throw. While on a short course at Clay College in 2022 I desperately wanted to throw 5 kilos or 10 pounds of clay. I sort of did it by copying a beautiful Clive Bowen jar that was left at the college as a resource. However, I wasn’t really satisfied; it’s heavy, with thick walls.

 I have practiced every so often since then and now I’m more content with the thickness of the walls of the pots as they are becoming thinner, although there is still a way to go before I feel confident in the arena of bigger pots. I think that there are some different techniques that would be useful to learn as well. Thinner walls are important as they partly determine the weight of the pot. It’s important to pick up a pot and for it to feel the right weight in the hand when compared to its proportions. However, your own personal previous experiences also play a role in your judgement about weight. If you are used to holding a bone china teacup, then my stoneware pots are never going to feel light! The two materials are very different, with different properties, including weight.

 So further developing my throwing skills to make bigger pots is an ambition for me. In my mind, the next question for me is what shape to make these pots? And this is what I hope to write about for my next blog, the issue of form.

¹ Kneading and wedging are different techniques in dealing with clay bodies. Kneading involves dealing with a smaller lump of clay, in preparing it for throwing. Wedging is the process of homogenising and de-airing larger amounts of clay during the recycling process.

² Richard Sennett (2009) The Craftsman. London: Penguin Books