The Art of Throwing and Glazing

In addition to my clay flowers, I've been taking classes at the local art center to learn traditional ceramics. I recently started to learn how to throw pieces on the wheel.   I've always had a fascination with wanting to work on the wheel and it wasn't because I watched the Ghost movie too many times=)  I originally learned how to throw bowls and cups in Korea so I thought that it wouldn't be too hard to pick this technique back up in class.  Mind you, it's been 8 years since I've thrown pottery so I knew I would be rusty.

When I sat at the wheel and tried to follow through with what my current teacher was teaching me,  things weren't going as smoothly.  After many failed attempts, I realized that I had learned how to throw with the wheel spinning in the opposite direction.  For some reason, potters in the U.S. decided to do things differently... not sure why.  Unfortunately, I had to relearn everything.

Here are some of my pieces. This first picture is the very first bowl that I threw.  Seasoned potters are able to make their pieces thin, but mine as you can see is very chunky.  Hopefully, I'll get better as I start practicing more.

One of the exciting things about pottery is that you can actually use and design what you make.  I had made some tea cups on the wheel since that's the easiest thing you can make when you're first learning.  When I got them back yesterday, we immediately started using them to drink water with our dinner.  I don't know if it's because we're biased, but water never tasted so good!

Glazing is another animal I had to master and learn.  One of the fun things about glazing is that it's often times unpredictable how your pieces will turn out. You may put a blue glaze on your piece, but it may turn out a gray.

Since we're both novices we just went crazy dunking our bowls and cups in whatever glazes were around.  Here's what our finished products look like.

Some of the pieces look like a muddy mess, but that's the fun of it all!