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Altered Forms

We had a new instructor for our most recent pottery class and I'm so glad we did because we learned so many new techniques. One new thing I tried was making altered forms. There are apparently many ways to alter a pot and I tried what are probably the two easiest.

For this one, I made a tall, round pot and just used the wood handle of a tool to make it square by running the handle from the bottom to the top of the pot on opposite sides. I really like the idea of square pots and I'd like to do this with a much larger pot (if I can ever work with that much clay).



Another new technique I tried was using the edge of a tool to draw squiggly lines around the pot while it is spinning on the wheel. After the lines were drawn, I used my fingers to push out different sections on the pot to give it more dimension. I think it would have worked better on a bigger pot. The sections I created were so small that it made it difficult to push them out enough to make a large visible difference.


This was never meant to be a mug. When I put it away while it was still wet, I must have hit it with another bat because it somehow got a big ding in the bottom of it. When I pulled it back out, the clay was already pretty dry. So rather than trying to fix it, I covered it up with a handle to make the world's smallest mug!

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