Tanner Sawitz – Throwing smaller scale forms for crystalline glazed pottery

Hi, my name’s Tanner Sawitz, and in this online pottery workshop, I’m going to go through the process and challenges involved in throwing smaller scale forms, specifically in regards to crystalline glazed pottery.

A lot of people don’t think about how they’re going to glaze something until they are at that stage, right?

But with crystalline glazed ceramics, you have to plan that out from the start. So I’ll be showing you how I throw three of my favorite shapes for crystalline glazed pottery, and the tips and tricks I have learned.

After this workshop you could be making amazing work like this:

I have been involved in ceramics for seven years, starting in my father’s high school class in Thousand Oaks, California.  My obsession with wheel-thrown forms led me to making miniatures, and I began creating these smaller, more intricate shapes exclusively.  Several years later, my father, Jerry Sawitz, and I started to experiment with crystal or crystalline glazes, eventually devoting our entire ceramic craft to crystal.

Everything I make is hand-thrown porcelain, miniature, and crystal-glazed with glazes my father and I develop and mix ourselves.  I am drawn to these tiny, sparkling objects in a way I can’t describe; opening the kiln after a crystal fire can be like Christmas morning for a child, filled with excitement and anticipation that is hard to find anywhere else.

I continue to practice my craft in Thousand Oaks, California, where I currently live.  There will always be something more to learn, and that’s the most exciting part.

I was born in Thousand Oaks in 1991, and moved back here after living in Orange County for a couple years for school.  While in college for film, I was able to get a job as the Lab Tech for the Chapman ceramics studio, where I worked for a year.

The only ceramics class I’ve ever taken was my father’s high school class.  I continued to learn after that, splitting my time between writing, film, and ceramics, under the tutelage of my father.

In any creative endeavor, there will always be something more to learn, and that’s the most exciting part.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tsawitzceramics