Throwing a Ceramic Teapot - Ceramic teapot throwing
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What we're doing is making a tea pot and we are working on the base, the actual form of
the tea pot. And now we're going to enter the form and open the form. The way we do
this, some people like to use their fingers and enter it like this, brace that finger
and enter. I personally like to put my hands on the sides of the clay and find the center
with my thumbs. And you find it naturally. You can see if I go like this I'm throwing
it off center but you'll naturally find the middle of the clay. And you just want to push
down in to it. We're going to take a little water and put it inside to stop any kind of
friction that's going to happen and I'm just going to go ahead and push my thumbs down
in to the form, like that. And this is sort of an issue of feel. Kind of gage how thick
and how far you've entered the pot. And you want about half an inch on the bottom depending
on the type of foot you're making. Now I'm going to open the form and I'm going to do
that with this hand and its called a claw. And I'm just going to claw the clay like this
and I'm going to pull it towards me pushing it down on to the bat at the same time. I'm
going to go like this. And there you can see the form opening up. Essentially what I'm
doing also while I'm doing this is I'm creating the inside base of what of what will be the
tea pot. O.k., so now we've entered the form and opened the form and the next stage of
this process is to pull this clay up in to the walls and make the body of the tea pot
and we're going to get to that next.
