Pottery Basics: Everything You Need to Know to Start Making Beautiful Ceramics

Working with clay is a deeply satisfying creative hobby, but many would-be potters are put off because they don't know how to get started. Pottery Basics shows the way. With instructive, clearly captioned, step-by-step photos on every page, it teaches everything they need to know to start making, decorating, and firing pottery. It also presents twelve simple projects that encourage beginning potters to put their new skills into practice. Expert potter Jacqui Atkin instructs on:

Types of clay

Basic modeling methods such as throwing, pinching, coiling, and trimming

Techniques for bisque and glaze firing, and much more

Beginners learn to make vases, trays, tiles, and many other attractive objects. They also learn techniques for creating designs, color combinations, and textures with inlays, slips, feathering, and burnishing. Separate sections instruct on clay preparation, on using a potter's wheel, and on firing in the kiln. Hundreds of instructive and inspiring color photos.

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This practical guidebook teaches all the skills you need to start creating beautiful ceramics. Step-by-step photographs and clear instructions guide you through the core techniques for making, decorating, and firing pottery, and inspirational projects allow you to put your skills into practice and develop your creativity.

Learn about types of clay and basic forming methods such as pinching and coiling. Gain confidence in throwing and trimming clay and develop your decorating and firing skills

Discover progressive projects as they teach a new skill, from simple coiled vases with painted decoration to marbled-clay boxes with transparent glazes

Follow easy instructions to decorate and add texture to your vessels with inlays, slips, sgraffito, feathering, burnishing, and resist techniques

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Clay is an expressive and exciting medium for beginners. If you’re a newcomer to the potter’s craft, you’ll quickly find yourself achieving impressive results as you master the easy-to-follow techniques presented in Pottery Basics.

A comprehensive course in pottery making, Pottery Basics introduces you to a wide variety of techniques for creating, decorating, and firing pottery. Graded from very basic techniques and simple projects to more complicated skills, manipulation of materials, and surface treatments, Pottery Basics will guide you through each procedure with clear, step-by-step photos and helpful tips for incorporating attractive decorating techniques. You will also find important information on health and safety, a library of decorative finishes, and glaze recipes that will give your pieces a professional finish. Pottery Basics is an invaluable resource for beginners and a useful reference for the more experienced ceramicist.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jacqui Atkin is a practicing ceramicist and has taught pottery in colleges and occupational therapy classes for several years. She now runs private courses in low-fire pottery techniques, including smoke-firing and Raku. She has contributed to several books as a project maker and gallery artist, and is author of the best-selling Handbuilt Pottery Techniques Revealed, also available in North America from Barron’s.