Ceramic Mugs on the Wheel
Now that I’m finished with most of my work for the semester, I decided to work on improving my skills throwing on the wheel. I worked with clay a bit in middle school and made a coil pot, but I never did any ceramics in high school. I started school as an art major at SEMO in 2019, but I still hadn’t taken an actual ceramics class until my third year at SEMO. So far, I have taken ceramics I-V. In my ceramics I class we learned how to throw on the wheel and I was never very good at it. Like everything, it takes a lot of practice to get good at but I preferred to hand build things instead since it was easier for me. I would practice throwing on the wheel every now and then, but I didn’t prioritize it.
I have worked on throwing off and on for the past few years and I have definitely improved. I am hoping to get a pottery wheel soon after I graduate so I can continue to work at home. I have made a few mugs before, but only hand built mugs using slabs of clay.
I wanted to try my best to make some mugs as gifts for my family and show myself that I can do it if I try. I threw about 6 cylinders and let them dry. Then, I trimmed the foot rings on all of them. Trimming a foot ring is basically waiting until the clay is leather hard and then turning it upside down, securing it down on the wheel with a couple pieces of clay, then marking where you want the bottom ring of the mug to be and using a loop tool to trim it down. After trimming, I add handles to all of my mugs. The best way to add a handle is by pulling one. For this technique, I start by filling up a bucket with water and rolling out a thick coil. I take the coil and dip it in the bucket of water and begin pulling the clay downward to form a handle. Next, I score the two ends of the coil where it will attach to the mug and then score the mug in the two places it will be attached to.
Once I attached handles on all the mugs, it was the fun part. I covered my cups in a creamy white colored slip and let it dry for a few minutes, then I used the sgraffito technique to carve through the white and draw fun designs on the mugs tailored to specific people of course. I wanted to make personalized gifts for people in my family that would be unique to my relationship with them. My favorite was the mug I made for my dad that has the Metallica logo on it and this year because we went to the concert together.