Gary Jackson: Fire When Ready Pottery
A Chicago potter’s somewhat slanted view of clay & play
Categories: classes, lillstreet, process

Tonight we worked on making basic bowls. It’s Week Six… and it was time
for my beginners to learn how to make real bowls – and not a cylinder gone bad!
So we started out with my demo of throwing basic bowls. With a nice smooth
curve inside, instead of a flat bottom & corners! So everyone made bowls…
but anyone can make a bowl. So we went a little further and worked on some
basic decoration techniques to make their bowls a little more special!

I started by quickly throwing eight bowls… all quick, all round, all plain.
And then we started playing… flanges & stamping, and dragging spirals through slip!

Chattering a rib through slip , and pressing in a “fish scale” tool to make a flower!

Then fluting the rim in four places, and a layer of black slip waiting for some sgraffito!

Then folding out the rim & stamping which I did a little after class when the bowls were
a little drier… as well as chattering done by one of my beginners Hanna!

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