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Julia Claire: How to Throw a Nine Pound Bowl

In this video, we see Julia Claire of JuliaClaireClay showing us how she throws a nine-pound bowl.

Julia Claire is a ceramic artist working at Odyssey Clayworks in Asheville, North Carolina. Her work focuses on darted forms, colorful decals, and mountain imagery.

Throwing a Nine Pound Bowl

Julia starts with a large ball of clay already on the pottery wheel and begins to center it and press it down. Once she is satisfied with it being centered she opens up with her hands and sponge and compresses the bottom of the bowl. This is important when throwing to always compress the center of your piece to ensure that it does not crack down the load. Once she is pleased with how thick the base of the bowl is then she proceeds to start pulling the form upwards and focuses more on pulling upwards than outwards at first for her bowl. This is a good idea so that you can have the height and thickness that you desire first before shaping the walls to create the curvature that you are desiring for your bowl. Once she is pleased with the wall thickness she shapes the walls of her bowl and opens up the upper part of the form to create a large opening for her bowl. She finishes cleaning the inside curvature of her bowl to ensure that it is smooth, compressed, and slopes upwards smoothly towards the rest of the bowl.

To see more of Julia’s work find her on Instagram @juliaclaireclay

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