Mastering Hand Building: Techniques, Tips, and Tricks for Slabs, Coils, and More

Join esteemed ceramic artist and instructor Sunshine Cobb for an inspiring exploration of hand building, from foundational skills to next-level techniques.

In Mastering Hand Building, discover a robust array of options for constructing both simple and complex clay forms without a potter’s wheel. Richly illustrated with color photography, this comprehensive volume includes:

• Essential techniques in hand building, covering pinch pots, coil building, and slab building
• Advanced techniques and tips for designing templates and replicating pieces, lidded vessels, using molds, a variety of decorative techniques, and other avenues of exploration
• An overview of kilns and firing schedules, plus slip and glaze recipes
• Slab-building and molding templates for creating plates, bowls, cups, and boxes
• Artist features and inspirational galleries, including work from today’s top working artists, such as Bryan Hopkins, Lindsay Oesterritter, Liz Zlot Summerfield, Bandana Pottery, Shoko Teruyama, Courtney Martin, Sam Chung, Deborah Schwartzkopf, and many more

Take your hand-building skills—and your artwork—to the next level with Mastering Hand Building.

The Mastering Ceramics series is for artists who never stop learning. With compelling projects, expert insight, step-by-step photos, and galleries of work from today’s top artists, these books are the perfect studio companions. Also available from the series: Mastering the Potter’s Wheel, Mastering Kilns and Firing, and Amazing Glaze.

Sunshine Cobb, author of Mastering Hand Building, is a ceramic artist and instructor based in California, where she is currently a visiting professor at Sacramento State University. She has previously held adjunct or visiting professor roles at Sonoma State University, University of Pacific, and Utah State. She has experience with everything from eight-day anagama wood firings to slip casting ornaments, but she focuses her talent on functional ware, embracing the richness of earthenware and exploring the challenge of electric firing. Sunshine has been the recipient of the Windgate Fellowship Emerging Artist award, a featured emerging artist in Ceramics Monthly (cover artist), and a long-term resident at Archie Bray. She has taught workshops across the country including Penland School of Crafts, Anderson Ranch Arts Center, Arrowmont, Santa Fe Clay, and The Clay Studio. She holds a BA in studio art from CSU Sacramento and an MFA in ceramic art from Utah State University.