How to throw 12 different mugs.

This is Crescent Beach and there's a causeway that goes across the bay. Calm night tonight. Another sunny spot. Here you go. This is a video just in general. I just thought I'd just show you a few different thrown things. Anyway, I'm just going to throw some mugs. So these are the little pieces of clay. Just about, I would say they're close to a pound. So clean your wheel head properly. So I think I'll make a few different shaped jars, or mugs rather, just to kind of make this a bit more than my usual. I'm just going to show you what I can do with one little piece of clay like this. Because this is recycled, it literally does have stuff off the floor on it. Whatever I bring in on my shoes gets mixed into the clay. I usually end up doing a bit more moving around with it on the wheel to make sure there's no air bubbles and no lumps that I can feel. And I can still find one when I pull the wall even if I do this. But I can feel something just about there. I'm going to let it go and I'll pop it out as I pull the wheel. So first thing you do is you center obviously and then you find the center and you push down. And you try and pull out at the same motion as you're pushing down so the water doesn't get dry or the water doesn't run out when it gets dry. And then moving my finger from the center to... from the wall to the center so it reverses the way I pulled it open. It's a trick I was taught to do years ago. I think it was Robin Hopper that told me that. It's a trick I was taught to do years ago. I think it was Robin Hopper that told me that. But anyway, pull your wall. That was right because he was doing a workshop on... and we asked him about removing S-cracks. And that was one of my... that was my old apprentice, Virginia Giro, who is now in San Antonio, Texas. I think she's headmistress of a school now. Anyway. So this is a normal mug. I'll show you what I normally do. This is a mug I've made for a long time. It's my best-selling mug. And I'm going to put a deep base on it so I can put some stamping in there if I want to. Every studio should have a mug shape, I think, that is their own. And it kind of identifies... it's the most common thing you sell, so it kind of identifies your studio. And there's my double lip. I think somebody... somebody called that a tankard lip in one of the comments I got. But I've always liked it because it gives you that flow of the handle coming off it, and then get your water out to basically clean it up. And then getting it off the wheel, I usually just dribble water right next to the foot, and then just while it's running slowly, pull the wire through, and one rotation you should pull it off. If you let it go by for the second rotation, for some reason it doesn't pull off as easy. You slide it onto your hand, and it doesn't disfigure this shape, I think. And that's my regular shape mug. There you go, second one. So once again, there was nothing in that last piece, even though I thought there was. I didn't feel it when I did the pull, so move it around, up, down. Oh, there's something in this one, I can feel it. Just popped you right out, this is a little air bubble. I've found bits of paper from my stencil, in a process that I do in the clay when I'm recycling, so it can be anything. And in the winter, lumps of salt from the bottom of my shoes come into the studio. Or just vaporize in the kiln, I guess. It blows out of the pot, that's the problem. So here we go, let's just do a cylinder. So you have a, that's drying out now, so I've got to be careful. I'll press the rim, and be careful when you get to the rim, so you don't make the rim thin. And this is your basic cylinder. Put your little foot in again, just to make sure I can do some stamping if I want to. And then these ribs are great, because you can sit them on the, oh I've got the foot in now, so I couldn't do it, but you can sit them on the wheel base, and so it goes around riding on the base, and then just pull up the wall on the inside against your rib, and it gives you a cylinder perfectly every time. So that's a good idea to use that wooden rim. Get that, now that rim is a little thick, you've got to remember, when it's thick enough so it doesn't look like it chips easily, that's a selling point for people, they don't like to see it too thick. But you can just use this rib like this, and I've seen some potters who just give that right at the top, and that's all you do to do that shape. Push your rib in and do that, and that gives you a little extra. Get this one off the same way, one rotation and pull it forward, and then it always seems to come off that way. And there's another one. Okay, another one of my fairly successful studio mugs is the one with a very narrow foot. And I always talk it up as a more elegant style of coffee mug, but the taller you go and the more narrow the foot functionally, the more chance you get to knock over. So down the same, but instead of pulling wide, I don't pull wide. I just make a hole about an inch and a half, two inches across at the bottom. Then we start the pull, fingers pressing, my little fingers pushing on the bat on the outside, and my inside fingers are just opposite my outside fingers going up the wall. And then compress that rim there, just there. And don't take it up higher than the length of your fingers for the first pull, because I'd like to be able to reach the bottom again. So now I can put my middle finger in and I'm touching, I'm now still touching the bottom on the inside, but I haven't touched the joint in the center of my middle finger there. So I can put my fingers in, push a little hard on the outside, and then pull up. My fingers are at that 45 degrees. I've talked about that in other videos. We're making the clay. There's some lump in the clay just there. You could probably see it in the video. So is that salt? Is it a piece of paper? Who knows? It might be a bit of grit. I don't have a screen in my pug mill. I took it out because it makes the clay pugs too slow. Okay, so now I can't reach the bottom without squashing the piece out, but I'm pushing in with my outside fingers and pressing hard with my inside fingers. So I'm pressing hard with those sets of fingers to do the final pull. And then I kind of let go on the inside and push still on the outside. And you've got that kind of belly shape. Same thing here. Push down a little bit. Push that, and all that ribbon give you that foot. It's a pre-made foot. You don't have to trim that in then. And then the rib is curved a little bit like this. And I push with my inside fingers against the rib to push out a little bit more and give myself a belly. And then I'm going to push the rib in on the outside to give myself a double ring lip. There you go. That's a nice shape. Mugs, I sell that fairly well. So dribble your water around so it touches the foot all the way around. And then go slow and cut through. But before you've gone one revolution, give a tug. Oh, it didn't pull off. But if you push it straight away, it will. Because it's released and it hasn't had time to resettle in. And there's that shape. Nice belly kind of mug. I think that settling on a style for a pottery is a good thing to do. So you try and make your pottery identifiable with what you make. So people can see you anywhere and say that's a so-and-so's garden. Or that's one of, you know, so-and-so's pottery. And that's a really good thing. And I've done that. But I also like to play and do lots of different things as well. And that's why I've stayed interested in this for now 50 years. And all that. 1973 was my first pots. Anyway, I'm going to do a sort of flaring trumpet shape, I guess. Push in, pull out, not too far. Leaving them an inch and a half, probably across the bottom. About four and a half centimeters. Four centimeters, I guess. And then you do the normal first pull. Inside fingers put some pressure back. But the outside fingers are where you've got most of your pressure. And that's why it continues to taper in. And then compress that rim. But no longer than your fingers. Make sure you can still reach the bottom with your middle finger. Then press hard on the outside. Press a little back on the inside. But you're angled at 45 degrees into your fingertips on the outside. And your middle finger is pressing right against my middle finger on my outside hand, basically, to give a little resistance. And my little finger, all that pull over here was touching the clay as well. Just to give it a bit more kind of stability. But there wasn't any pressure with that little finger. Anyway, now you're going to go for that foot. You can do it with your fingers or the wooden tool. But I'm pressing hard to get that foot down there. And then coming here, I'm going to make a slightly widening straight wall all the way to the top. Don't get too wide at the top because that makes it really top heavy. But then just come in with your wooden tool and emphasize that. That you did with your finger to give you that nice foot. Dribble some water on the inside just to make sure you've got lubrication. And then using this tool, it's just to scrape the water off and flatten the wall. So it's a straight flare all the way up. And if you're a beginner at pottery, you should just experiment with lots of shape mugs. And figure out what it is that makes something sell when it's on the shelf. And also the glazes, of course. You can also just throw the water at your piece like that. And then turn slowly. And it should pull out. It didn't, but it moved a bit. And then you just push and it comes right out. There's a lot of clay in there that fell in from somewhere. That was inside there. Make sure you don't leave things in because that could become sharp. And that's a straight wall. Okay, so we did this the same as all the others, but it's a wider bottom. Dribble the water on and then pull up and taper in a lot. So there's lots of pressure on the outside fingers. Resisting with the inside, but not too high again. You want to be able to reach that middle finger all the way to the bottom again. And then you do your second pull. This time the pressure is a bit more on the inside as well as the outside. So you should be able to gain at least an inch and a half to two inches in height when you do that. And you let go slowly. Put your little foot on. These don't have to have a foot if you don't want to, but I always put the foot because it's nice to get a glaze. Plus the supply chain thing. I can't buy stilts at the moment. I got an order in for stilts 12 weeks ago. So we're having a lot of problems getting materials. Okay, so you see what I mean by ship smoke? Wide base, narrow tops, the coffee stays warm a lot longer. And you can also... Let's see if I can find a rib here. I might be able to use this. I've got a throwing rib somewhere around here. I don't see it, but anyway. You can put a wooden rib in there and just belly out a little bit to make that a little bit more of a curve rather than a cylinder, sort of a straight wall shape. And that sort of is nicer then. And then you can do your little double tankard rim if you want to. And then I'll turn this over and then put that wall. So that gives you that line really strong then. And allows this to stay with that curve the same there. And there we go. Now remember, I do not have a gritty clay. This clay is a little bit more than normal, but none of my clays are gritty. So I don't worry about using a sponge. But you can also use the leather on the rim or the rubber band tool we have somewhere around here. This one. And I've been told by a subscriber they actually put a leather across here and it works just as good. So you can still use your leather if you really want to keep using the leathers. But this tool just curbs the rim nicely. So you've got a nice smooth. And that's just a rubber band inside that tool. Okay, did we get all the water out? No, there's still some in there. All right, dribble your water. Let's see how easy it comes off. One rotation and then pull a little tug, but not too fast. It's like a gradual movement to pull towards you and it comes off the center. And then you slide it on your hand. And this hand gets a little water and just wets the bat and then slide it on. This one's a kind of a modification on a few months. It's going to have a taller flange at the top and a little belly a bit lower down. My recycled clay has been growing really nice. All the trimmings that I just, I've been throwing recycled clay for two weeks. But all the trimmings I've been getting off, I'm recycling again. So it's actually going to be a third generation recycled clay. Anyway, push down. Not too far. Pull back across to the wall towards you. Let go slowly. Fill it full of water. And then pull your finger right to the center. And I sometimes do that twice. So you're basically coming right to the center. And I dig my fingernail in. The back of my fingernail gets dug in there. See that really strong curve there? That gives me my fingertips in the next pull. Gives me something to get underneath and pull up. So that's a good thing to get in, you know, try to do. See now my fingers feel underneath that groove. And I can start my next pull knowing I've already got a lump of clay above my fingers on the inside. And you just let go slowly when you get up there. So now back again to the bottom right in that groove. And I'm pulling up 45 degrees on the fingers on the outside. And then let go before you make the rim too thin. Let's go for a third one on this because I want to get it a little taller. So I'm going to push deep with my outside fingers. And start the pull. And then push hard with the outside fingers to make it get narrower. And let go before I make it too narrow at the top and too thin. So that's most of the shaping. But now I'm going to put my foot in. Turn it around. Use the other side. Now these ribs come from, I don't know, Kemper or somebody. I modify them when I get these. It's less of a right angle curve here. So I sharpen that up a bit. And I cut some of this off to make it a different shape. So these ribs have been modified. So that's how I can do that. If you're having trouble trying to copy that, it's probably because your rib isn't the right shape. But anyway. Get the rib on the bottom. I'm going to make a belly down there. And then I come in fairly quickly. And press hard with that corner of the rib. And then I go a deeper flange there. And give yourself that really nice curve. And that's a sort of modification on the other ones. Anyway, let's see if it moves. Yeah, it does anyway. Yeah, these little holes in these. These vats are thinner than normal ones because I made them myself. Anyway, there's the shape. There you go. I live on the ocean. We always think, will we find some doubloons? Look at this. Little pebble. Oh, it's a seed. I feed the birds. It's a bird seed. Now you've got that hole. So what do you do? Take a little bit of clay. Without getting water into where the seed came from. I simply place that in there and rub it in. And you're making sure you didn't get water in that area it came from. And that way it won't actually leak. And then watch, it'll disappear. Just use the rib to make it disappear. It's pretty much gone. Okay, so we'll put a foot in. Yeah, the birds haven't seen it here yet. Because we're on a kind of a stuck-out promontory. A little shape of woodcut promontory that sticks out in North America. But there's a lot of bird flu going around in New Brunswick, I guess. And down in the States. So we're hoping it doesn't come because I have lots of nice birds. But they found like 2,000 dead birds on one beach. Okay, so let's see. We're going to make a belly. It's kind of narrow. So here's the throwing stick. It's nice if you can get one of these as well. And you can... I want to drag the water off with the rib. And I'm pushing with the throwing stick. And now I'm not pushing with the throwing stick. And I'm just going in with the rib. And you can kind of decide what you like here about something. And change the curve just by using your rib on the outside edge there. To smooth off your curve. I can press in deep there with the edge of the rib if I want to. And really kind of get that shape changed. But you can play around with this. And then this is the really tall double rim. And you can turn your rib around if you want to make that even more obvious. You can use the corner of your rib to kind of give that top area a different grain. And there you go. This is this tool. This is on some free 3D software kind of website for making pottery tools. And I designed it with Freddy Moretti. And it gives you a nice smooth round rib on your piece. All right. Okay, putting the handles on mugs I've shown before. But I have a lot of different shaped mugs here. So does that determine what a handle should be? Well, that's a choice you just have to make, I guess. I have got these so that they're firm at the rim. I didn't actually get to them as quickly as I'd hoped. So I just have to spend a couple of minutes before I put the handles on. Just softening that area. And I sprayed the inside with a spray bottle just to get them. So it's now a little bit movable like that. They were a little stiffer than that when I started this. But you need to be able to make sure that when you put handles on without scoring and scratching that the clay is really not like when you were throwing it. But it has stiffened up so that you can handle them without action. I mean, they're still bendable. I mean, you can actually you can see that I can bend these quite easily. But the area that I'm going to join the handle to is very soft. Because I just wet that down a bit. And my handles, which are pulled there, are basically like I've shown pulling handles before. And they're fairly soft. And I keep the ends fairly soft by spraying the ends of them. But the body of the handle is stiffened up a little bit so it can actually hold its shape. And the normal mug that I do is very similar to this one actually. And I'm just going to stick the handle on as I normally would here. Which is I've got this squished up a little thicker. And then you put it on the area that's going to go. And you move it around. And squish it until it feels like it's stuck. And then you just squelch it. But it should stick. You know, and I'm pushing with my finger from behind. So that it actually does actually get a good bit of pressure on there. And then it actually, you know, is really stuck. And then you just shape it to what you want. This is recycled clay. So I wedged it so that it actually... It doesn't crack when you bend it as much when you knead it a little bit. Recycled clay is shorter which means it's less plastic than brand new clay. I stick that little wedge in there. And that stops you from getting the little cracks at the bottom of your handles. Then I actually make a little knobby thing there. And stick that right in the hollow area where the handle is there. Now if you pull your handles and your hands are a different shape to mine. Your handles may not have that double groove. But when I pull handles my knuckle goes down and gives me that double kind of groove thing. So I always fill it in a little bit up there as well. And it adds extra strength down here and here. And somebody just brought a mug back where they'd broken it. And the handle had broken up there and down there. Not where I joined it. So I knew it wasn't my fault. The handle had just been hit. But the join that I did was really good. And let's get the next one of these on. And now I'm just going to make judgment calls as I do this. As to where the handle should go. And that one the same thing. I'm going to put it up there. That's why I do that double groove on them. Because it kind of defines where the handle is going to sit. And then curling it down. Making sure you can get two or three fingers in that little gap there. And then just a tack. So I can look at it and see if it's straight. Which it is. And then I curl off a little bit there to fold over. Gives me extra thickness. And then this little piece here I'm going to snap in half. Which gives me the little wedge to go in this part down there. And then the little bit to fill in the hole of it on the top. To get me some extra thickness there as well. Always keep a sponge next to where I'm working. So I can keep my fingers clean. And a towel like a little rag on my lap. So that I can dry my hands a little bit for handling the wet slippery clay. And now because my mugs are kind of hard to get my hand in when they're this small. I put a brush which is sort of soft bristles right behind where I'm pressing. And use my thumb pushing against that paintbrush on the inside. And then smudge it over. And I do that all the way around. And then I change over to this smaller brush. And I push that wedge in and bend it over. So I'm smudging that coil in. That little wedge shape thing. And then the top the same again underneath there. And then over the top there. So it's roughly smudged in at the moment. And I do the move to the next one. Okay now they're all roughly smudged in. So now I take the bristles of the brush. And go over the whole thing. To get rid of any nasty marks from my paintbrush. Now sometimes I'll just brush the thing in with a paintbrush. And use the ferrule of the paintbrush to do all the sculpting. That I was doing there with the end of the paintbrush. So there it is. I make my little round balls. It was sunny and dry with a light breeze all day today. So very nice weather. Now you can squish these down a little bit. So you don't have to press as hard. When you actually put the stamp in. And if the handle's pretty soft. It's sometimes nice to just squish them. And I press without trying to squish the handle any thinner. So I'm just rolling it back and forwards. So I don't have to put as much pressure on. My goal was to not squish the handle at all thinner. Under that area. Because you can dent the shape of the handle if this looks awkward. And these aren't that bad. I mean I haven't marked the rims at all. So I don't really need to do any of that. But that's a nice set of ordinary mugs. Doing some different variations on the mugs. I thought I'd give you a quick break here. Take a look at the weather today. It's a very grey. And we had a thunderstorm last night. Misty day. Basically it's June. We always feel like June is a bit rainy and a bit foggy. And it's cool. It's only about 60 degrees today. So what's that? About 14 centigrade I guess. But it's nice. Oh look there's Seagull. Just landed. There you go. He's going to go whack whack. Anyway there you go. Okay these mugs are now what I would say is a good leather hard. So they're going to be perfect to trim. Because the trimmings are going to fly right off. No sticking. So I'm doing a double ring trimmed on the bottom there. And then hollow out the bottom a little bit. So that your piece definitely sits flat on the table. But if you want to glaze and just have a ring unglazed around the foot area. Then you can hollow out even more. But since I fire on stilts that's not a big deal for me. The handle stops you trimming any further down than that. But that's a nice looking mug. That's a shape I do occasionally. This is one shape I don't do very often at all. So I wouldn't say this is my studio mug or shape or anything. It's one I you know I've done in the past. But I never found it was you know lucky evolution. I mean you can make the things that seem to sell the most. And we make them again. More of a cylinder with a little opening at the top. Mugs shouldn't take long to trim. Because if you throw it with a nice foot shape. You're really just knocking off the roughness. That it picked up from the bat or whatever else it was sticking to. And because the handle goes right down there. You really can't trim much more than that anyway. And this is my studio mug. That's the shape I do all the time. Okay now I'm going to carve the mugs. And I have a belly on this piece. So whatever I do it's going to be hard to actually stop at a certain point. So you have to determine you know if you're going to be stamping. It's a bit past that point now. So I can get rid of my little stamps. So I'm down to you know carving and trimming. And of course let's get some light on this. I think you can see it anyway. So one way is just using your trimming tool. And if we can get fairly fast at doing this. Can't stop at a certain point every time. It's a bit too hard to measure that. There's a little lump of something in the clay. But that's kind of a nice. I think you can see that. Nice little texture that will pick up the glaze there. There's that lump. I wonder what it was. It's gone now. It's just a tiny bit of grit then. But then you can turn a piece upside down. You can use your potato peeler. This is my favorite that I get with all my technically gold kind of pieces. And I use the back there. So the wheel and the angle of the potato peeler to get it. So it stops almost the same point down the piece every time. See those marks are pretty much even all the way down on that one. Because this was stopping my tool from going any further. And then just handle it again. Quick rub just to make sure you've got no debris stuck to it. This is my traditional shaped mug. So I do this depending on the angle of the mug. And then I do these the right way up. So holding the tool at a certain angle means it's going to hit the wheel at the same point as on the stroke down the coffee mug. So I keep the actual. And then I just rub away. There's always a scratch there from the angle of the tool. But that makes the glaze flow into those lines. That's, you know, what are we talking about? 30 seconds to do that little motion. And you can also use the other trimming tool. And we'll start doing the diagonals again. This is a slightly wider trimming tool. I'm hitting the wheel every time. So I can try and stop. At that point all the way around. This mug looks like it could do just the same kind of thing. But let's try a slightly different spacing. So we'll give it a little short one there. Then I'm going to go too far over. Too far over. I'm going to repeat that. So I'm always going too far over. I'm going to take the other trimming tool. And go short, thin. Rooted line on every place where I left the flat of the mug. So we've got, like, we'll have a double layer of fluting there to drag the glaze. This one. I'm trying to think what I should do to that one. Sometimes you get, like, a dilemma and you think, should I do anything? And, um, well, I think it might be nice to, instead of on the belly, we'll just sort of go up here. And I've got a little ridge there where I can hopefully feel and stop each time. So, you know, all the throwing that I've done is very fast. Everything else takes longer. We've done, you know, so many things over the years. And you kind of decide what you like doing the best in the pottery. And throwing is obviously my favorite thing to do. But, you know, once you've got all those pots, they've got to be glazed. I've got probably five glaze, uh, bisque firings of work ready to be glazed. And I keep putting off going into my glaze room. I won't be able to do that much longer because I'll run out of shelf space. Well, we can try something. It's a nice little mug here. But, um, I don't know what we can do. I've seen this mark in slip trailing. Thomas Toft slip trailer. 14th century, I think. I can't remember exactly. Maybe 15th. Maybe 16th. Anyway, it's very old. Thomas Toft. So you've got that. And then, you know, you could always have something done in the middle when you're glazing. I could make like a little dotting thing in the center of each one of these marks. That might be nice. So we're still keeping the glaze again. But that's, you know, a simple but nice little decoration for a coffee mug to catch the glaze. And that's what carving is. It's all about catching the glaze. I'm actually going to do some really figurative carving. But I'm going to go back and do this again. The sounds of summer, it's that. I'm not sure if you can hear it, but there's a lot of traffic now. But we also have the little boat outside. Sorry, the little schooner outside. And every so often the wind catches the mast and it makes that clinking noise. Very coastal sound. I'm surprised we're not hearing the foghorn today because it's quite foggy. That's always that sound. I always associate that sound with that mystery writer who does the spooky novels. So it comes from Maine. There we go. Nice little shape of mug really. This one's a bit of a dilemma. Since if I did parallel lines they would probably end up being not that parallel. I'm just going to do that mark I just did. So this is all done with a trimming tool. Nice mug. The round shape is a dilemma for me as well. So because I've not done this one with the shape before. So let's just do something. I probably won't get it to stop at the same point each time. But we can do a crisscross hatch thing. Easier said than done maybe. Be careful about rims at this point. Because my fingers are holding on to the thinnest part of the mug practically. And then back the other way. So okay so you can see a little crisscross that's a simple easy kind of thing to do. So let's try that floating tool. It might not be easy to stop at a certain point but. So potato peeler. And I suppose after you've done that it's thin. It's a bit close together for doing this one as well but let's give it a go. So we'll see whether that's kind of what we've done before actually but. And now we've got the really really. I just kind of like the idea of just doing this upper part on these. So try doing the crisscross thing at the top there again. So I start with the top of the last card line that I did to kind of keep it even. There you go. That's actually quite nice. See it better like in the light like that. Yeah that's quite nice. And the bowl. So now I could do down here. People won't see it when they're looking at the mug because that's underneath. But that's not a bad thing because I think I like it when people pick my mugs up and take a look at the bottom and say what's down there. So we'll do the crisscross thing again. So I mean this is not something I've never done before but it's nice to remind yourself of other things because you can get in a rut. I mean I'm talking from experience there. I made the same type of pieces for like 15 20 years and it made it literally paid for my house and my studio and everything. I mean it was the stencil design things but I never made anything different during that whole time. And now I'm having much more fun doing everything different. So and we have to stay you know happy about what we're doing and have fun. It's part of being a potter.