Basic Pottery Techniques

1. Handbuilding with Pinching (Pinch Pot)

Pinch pot handbuilding is one of the simplest and oldest techniques in pottery. It consists of shaping the clay using only your hands, without any tools or a wheel.

Process: The potter starts with a ball of clay and gradually hollows it out with their thumbs while shaping the walls with their fingers. It’s ideal for small pieces like bowls or decorative figures.
Advantages: Great control over shape and texture. Perfect for beginners and for creating organic, expressive pieces.

 

2. Coil Technique (Coiling)

The coil technique, or coiling, is very popular and allows you to create larger and more complex forms.

Process: You roll out long coils or ropes of clay and then stack them one on top of another to build up the walls of the piece. Afterwards, the coils are blended and smoothed together to create an even surface.
Advantages: This technique is ideal for building large vessels or more detailed structures without using a wheel.

Although potters often smooth the walls after laying the coils, this technique allows for many other creative approaches. As an example, here’s a more experimental concept (in this case, the walls are not smoothed):

3. Slab Building Technique

Slab building allows you to create geometric and structured forms using flat sheets of clay.

Process: Clay is rolled out with a rolling pin to create even slabs. These slabs are then cut into shapes and assembled to build structures such as boxes, plates, or abstract forms. (If you use this technique often or for larger production, it’s a good idea to use a mechanical slab roller instead of a simple rolling pin.)
Advantages: Excellent for pieces with flat or angular shapes, and for experimenting with textures and surface patterns.

You can work with soft slabs or firm slabs. When we say “firm”, we mean the clay has dried to a leather-hard stage. At that point it can stand up on its own, making it easier to build certain geometries.

4. Pottery Wheel (Wheel Throwing)

Wheel throwing is one of the most iconic pottery techniques and requires a lot of skill and practice.

Process: A lump of clay is placed in the centre of the wheel, which spins at high speed. The potter then uses their hands to shape the clay as it spins, creating symmetrical forms such as pots, bowls, cups and vases.
Advantages: It allows you to create symmetrical pieces with thin, even walls – ideal, for example, for producing multiple similar pieces.

5. Molding Technique

Molding involves the use of molds to shape the clay.

Process: There are two main ways to do this:

1. You can press clay into the mold by hand, or

2. You can pour liquid clay (slip) into a mold, usually made of plaster, to create detailed or repeatable forms.

Once the clay has set, the piece is removed from the mold and refined by hand.

Advantages: Ideal for producing multiple pieces with complex shapes or fine details that would be hard to achieve by hand.

For example, here we show a simple geometric heart-shaped mold, which produces pieces like this once the clay has been poured and released from the mold:

However, molds are not only used for simple shapes or high-volume production—and here’s a good example of that: