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Workshop Replay How to handbuild a goblet cup with mike Cerv
38 Plays5 months ago
What is up everyone I recently did a virtual workshop with Mike Cerv about How to Handbuild a Goblet Cup and I learned and enjoyed this workshop so much that I decided to post the replay here
I also decided to give the full video of the workshop for free as well if you want to follow along with the workshop click below to get the full video
Free Workshop Replay How to Handbuild A Goblet Cup with Mike Cerv click here to get your replay https://shapingyourpottery.ck.page/14af70bc70
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Transcript
Introduction and Workshop Announcement
00:00:00
Speaker
What is up, Shape Nation? This is Nick Torres here, and very recently I got to do a workshop with Mike Cerver all about how to hand build a goblet cup. And I learned so much during this workshop that I couldn't keep it to myself. So I decided to post a full workshop here on the Shape Your Product Podcast. If you want to be able to see what Mike is doing step by step, go to shapeyourproduct.com forward slash goblet or click the link in the description to get the full video. It's completely free. All I need is your email. Hope you guys enjoy this workshop.
00:00:28
Speaker
and let's get
Collaboration with Mike Cerver
00:00:29
Speaker
to it. Welcome everybody. My name is Nick Torres and welcome to the how to hand build a goblet cup workshop. And I'm so happy you guys are here. I'm so very excited. And for those that don't know me, my name is Nick Torres and I run the shaping your party podcast how positive stuff stuff your own unique voice with your pottery.
00:00:47
Speaker
And one of the best ways to do that is to simply learn directly from other potters. And that's why I'm so excited Mike here has agreed to do a workshop with me. And he'll be teaching all about his step-by-step process and how he creates a goblet cup using slabs and his templates that he creates for everyone. If you don't know Mike, Mike creates some amazing pottery, some hand built pottery. He also sells his templates as well for anybody to use as well.
00:01:13
Speaker
So here's the plan for today. So this is gonna be about an hour, hour and a half long around there. Mike's gonna teach you his process.
Goblet Creation Templates and Tools
00:01:21
Speaker
He's gonna go into great detail, into the tools he uses and everything he does to create his pottery and he creates his templates and how he creates a goblet cup as well. With that in mind, I'm gonna let Mike take it from here and I hope you guys enjoy it. Thank you. Thank you for coming. I'm really excited to be able to
00:01:41
Speaker
do a workshop here in my basement. So I hope you don't mind the dungeon vibes, but you know, really excited to share this aspect of my process. I'm just going to go ahead and jump in. I figured I would start by showing the templates that I use. So I'm going to flip my video around here. Try to anyway. Give us a bird's eye view.
00:02:07
Speaker
This template is the base goblet template that we're going to be talking about today. And it comes out to be this form. So it's got a pentagonal kind of belly section, round rim, and a conical foot. I've added a drainage hole here for the foot so that when it's gone through the dishwasher or it's sitting in the dish rack, it doesn't fill up with water. In case you're wondering about that.
00:02:34
Speaker
But with these templates, I've also made customized versions of things with my designs. So I sell the solid templates on my website. These ones I make for myself, but you could do similar things with leather hole punches to cut out patterns, things like that. So this one, for example, created this goblet. I used a different section for the foot. But the cutouts create this low relief.
00:03:04
Speaker
All right, I also just wanted to show you all the various tools that I use can't quite get far enough over these my practice because I only so many things they use them over and over.
00:03:28
Speaker
my template because it's not sharp but it glides really nicely or just a really broad is not the best. I also have a mallet. I've made this one. My salsa at the handle has some room for when I'm hitting the slab. I've always been frustrated with mallets where it's right in line with the handle and you end up hitting your knuckles. Stamp various ribs. I use a serrated rib for all of my scoring.
00:03:56
Speaker
a cheese cutter. Use this for rims and things. Then some brays, some wooden rollers. Alrighty. Now I've gotten all of that out of the way. And I am forgetting one thing. I also use some wooden sticks. These are just quarter inch pieces of pine. You could use like yard sticks. Those work quite well. And I use these for the formation of my slabs, which is what I'm going to get right into now. So
Slab Preparation and Template Attachment
00:04:26
Speaker
For my slabs, I use a method a lot like perhaps making slabs. So I want to start with a block. I've got a bag of clay here. The whole plan fully in the frame. Yeah, there we go. So I've got this bag of clay here and a pretty broad block. And what I'm going to do is just slam this block.
00:04:52
Speaker
on the ground to make it a shape that accommodates this form. So I want to get it large enough to fit this template. Just like you would when you're throwing a slab, throwing it directionally is going to help to stretch it out. But by keeping it in this bag, I can lift it up and move it around. And I'm not really worried about getting my hands all dirty or this face all dirty. But if it starts to get
00:05:19
Speaker
kind of stretch down tight. I can pick the plastic up, kind of release it from the surface of the clay, and then seal it back down, and then continue to throw. So now I've got this pretty flattened block of clay here, and it's just about the exact size that I need.
00:05:47
Speaker
And really, I'm just making this block large enough to accommodate that template. Because once I cut these slabs, they're going to be pretty close to the thickness that I need. So I'm not going to have too much room to stretch it out and increase the size of my slab to fit the template. Getting the plastic off afterwards is always a little bit of a struggle from the stretching.
00:06:14
Speaker
But I find that by just kind of peeling it from one edge, you're getting it around the corners. Once it's kind of over this first edge, it pops off. It's pretty easy. Go to the other side. I don't know. Get these templates out of the way and set my block down. Now, this is where my mallet comes in to really refine this block.
00:06:39
Speaker
You know, you can't really see it from the bird's eye view, but there's kind of a lift here where the block has gotten kind of deformed from being taken out of the bag. So I'm just going to slam this around the edges, kind of get it all flattened up so that my slabs are generally uniform. Right now, this kind of a twisty motion.
00:06:58
Speaker
as I'm hitting. This is a flat spot, and it's a pretty moist block of clay. So if I hit it straight on and pull it straight away, I'm going to be forming a vacuum. It's going to have difficulty pulling away. And eventually, I'll end up ripping clay off. So instead, I'm peeling my mallet off with a little bit of a twist. So it's a slap and a twist.
00:07:26
Speaker
So that way I can work a bit faster and not worry about getting clay all on my mallet here. Hopefully the camera is not too shaky. And then I like to do it on the sides as well. They're kind of rounded, kind of a mushroom top from being whacked. And so inevitably the slices of cheese that I'm going to cut, the slabs,
00:07:50
Speaker
will not be the same size because the flaps at the bottom will be skinnier because it's kind of mushroomed over. And then back on the top. Now, in doing this, it's also really attached to this block to the table without peeling it up. It's not going to slide around.
00:08:10
Speaker
which for the next step is actually quite nice. Usually when I'm making, I'm making multiples of everything. And that's a lot of the reason I use these templates. I can make the same goblet form with as many patterns as I want. And so I can put them all on slabs and make them all at the same time. So I want a lot of slabs to accommodate the repeated form.
00:08:39
Speaker
So I do that by using these sticks and slicing through. Oftentimes people have some difficulty getting through the block. There's a lot of tension from the wire tugging through the clay. You know, if you've got grog, that's going to be more so.
Shaping the Goblet Body
00:08:57
Speaker
So my advice to that is don't go perfectly horizontal, you know, perfectly perpendicular to your clay or your sticks here.
00:09:06
Speaker
Think of it more like a guillotine or mandolin, I think, the cooking thing, the slice. Because if you're going in at this angle but moving down straight along the strips, it'll cut one side first and then the other, and so it'll have less friction. So I'm just going to get it taught with my fingers, just a space long enough that I can glide my thumbs along these strips of wood.
00:09:34
Speaker
And then I'm going to move one thumb in, kind of starting that guillotine angle and then start slicing through. I like to clean off my wire, just kind of squeegeeing it like this and then removing some strips of wood, one from either side and then wiring through again. Now, as I do this, I find it very important to
00:10:02
Speaker
not only keep the wire top, but also make sure that my thumbs are gliding along and pressing along this wood. You know, if I kind of lift up my thumbs or maybe the wood is warped or something like that, I'm going to end up with a slab that has some undulations that isn't completely even. And I've got these nice flat sticks. I might as well make a nice flat slab.
00:10:31
Speaker
So just doing this process. So this is a really quick way of making slabs. And something that I find really nice about it is slabs made on a slab roller or with a rolling pin, because they're rolled out, the particles are really laid down. And in one direction, oftentimes that causes some warping.
00:10:59
Speaker
But with this method, they're being really slammed down directly. And so there's a lot of compression happening. So my slabs generally stay flat if I want them flat or stay curved if I want them curved. So I just kind of used my palm here to get some friction on the edge. And I'm just lifting up on the backside of this block. So side. You can see that I definitely didn't do the best job on wedging.
00:11:27
Speaker
That's okay because as long as the clay moisture is all even, these little air bubbles are not going to bother me too much because I'm going to smooth it out and you won't see them. There's a common misconception or a mistaught rule in ceramics that air bubbles are going to mean an explosion, but it does not. So long as you allow your pots to dry fully, it's no issue at all. All right.
00:11:58
Speaker
and just go in and I peel away each of these slabs. It's very moist here. It's been kind of a wet stormy day, so my clay is a little bit more wet than I would like. Other than a little bit more flexibility, that's not too much of an issue. Goodness. So I'll just peel all these away. And I just restack them. I'm setting them just to the side here, because I want to stay on the video. But I have a damp box that I set them in.
00:12:26
Speaker
after I've wired them off. And in that way, I can keep slabs usable for quite some time. And even if the slabs kind of gain a certain level of stiffness from staying in that damp box, usually if I use this large scraping tool, which right now I'm just using to try and get this slab off, which there we go.
00:12:55
Speaker
If I use it on the slabs in the damp box and just kind of run across it kind of recompressing, just like a bag of porcelain, oftentimes that'll wake it up and allow me to use the slab as if it was fresh. You know, there's
00:13:14
Speaker
this there we go making sure it's nice and centered there's this belief that you need to wedge your clay after it's been sitting in a bag for a long time right and that is generally for the wheel and that's because you know just like what happens in a damp box you know the particles are kind of settling within one another and so that wedging helps to re-jostle them
00:13:44
Speaker
In this case, wake it up. So I'm now going to take my mega scraper here, and I'm just going to use it to squeegee and smooth and compress the surface of this slab. If I have any pocket areas, things that were like air bubbles or something, I'll just add a little bit more clay. Like I said, it's really wet, so I don't have to worry about
00:14:11
Speaker
like slipping or scoring or anything, it's going to stick. I don't know, just do that until it's all nice and flat. The really harsh lighting in my basement allows me to see air bubbles by kind of turning at an angle and looking at it from the side. You can't see it, but I'm kind of cocked over like this. And so from this angle with the harsh light, just looking at any little
00:14:39
Speaker
pimply spots and taking my knife and going in at an angle and then lifting it up so that I kind of make a flap and then I'll push the air out of that flap and squish it down. So just find all those and then squishing the air out of the flap. There's a little guy right there pushing it down and then going back in again with my nice mega scraper here.
00:15:09
Speaker
And now all of those air bubbles are all gone. And I didn't wedge this bag of clay. It's just straight reclaimed that I homogenized. All right. So now that I have this first side cleaned up and smoothed, I'm going to go ahead and attach my template. So in the case of this solid template, I've got this set.
00:15:36
Speaker
For the solid templates, the textured templates, it kind of holds on to the clay. So I don't have to worry too much about adding moisture. But you can see how dry this tar paper has gotten. It's got some clay dust and stuff on it because it's been used before. But that clay dust is going to kind of keep this template from sticking. I'm going to apply the template. And I want it to stay on this slab through the whole process. So to make sure that that happens,
00:16:07
Speaker
I'm going to just spritz this with water. I'm going to do it kind of off to the side here so I'm not spraying my table. But I just want to mist all of this. So I've gotten it pretty wet, you can see. Now I'm just going to rub that water in. And this is really only important for this kind of first use. And if I was on to my second, third, however many goblets I'm making,
00:16:32
Speaker
I would not need to do this each time. It's just after it's been sitting and gotten all dry. I then also like to take a red rubber rib, vulcanized silicone, whatever the heck it is, and just get that excess water off, because I just need enough that it is not bone dry. There we go. So once I have that, I will place it on my slab.
00:17:01
Speaker
And that's where my wooden brayer comes in. I generally use this frustratingly squeaky but wide brayer to apply templates. And I do that because it really spreads out the pressure. Works well for these templates as well.
Attaching Goblet Foot and Body
00:17:18
Speaker
But sometimes I've found if I have really tight little designs or really small things to get into spaces,
00:17:26
Speaker
I'll need to use my smaller brayer and really kind of work and focus on each little thing. But for these solid ones, nothing to really worry about there, just making sure that the template is attached fully to the slab. Once I have that and I'm sure it's all attached, I'm going to peel my
00:17:50
Speaker
a slab away from my cement board here. I forgot to talk about it when I said it here, but this is cement board. It's my favorite material to work on, and that's because it absorbs moisture so well. It's absorbent like plaster or drywall, but it's hard like wood, so I can use metal tools on it and not have to worry about getting plaster into my clay. If I was just doing this straight on canvas or on my wooden table, as I was rolling
00:18:21
Speaker
that template in, I probably would have made my slab so stuck to the table that getting it off would have been hard. So using this cement board really allows me to work more effectively and a lot quicker because I don't have to like peel things away. It just comes right off. All right. So then just smoothing out the backside again, and you might be able to see it. My view is teeny tiny, but
00:18:48
Speaker
you really can kind of see the shadow of the template. And I only really focus on compressing and smoothing until that full shadow is visible. And I don't worry about the edges because I'm going to cut them off anyway. All right, flipping it back over. A lot of times slab handling or slab building, people handle their slabs really gingerly. There's a lot of worry about things bending back and forth.
00:19:18
Speaker
What's really nice about this tar paper template on here is I can really pretty aggressively manipulate this slab, and the tar paper is going to hold it all together. So I don't have to worry about things like tearing as it bends or anything like that. All right. Now that I've gotten it attached and it's smooth on both sides, I'm ready to go in and cut out the shape fully. So I'm going to take my needle tool, just like I mentioned,
00:19:47
Speaker
And I like to kind of bevel it. There's such a bad glare on my phone. I like to kind of bevel it outward. So, you know, this goodness, if this is the table, when I'm cutting everywhere, but this edge, I keep it perpendicular. But when I'm on this edge, I kind of lean it out so that there's extra clay on the inside of the slab.
00:20:14
Speaker
So kind of leaning my needle tool out here, giving me extra on the side, and then standing it up and doing it straight up and down everywhere else. And I do that so that the edge that is that main joining edge has extra clay to really join and compress together. I do the same on the opposite side, kind of adding some extra clamp. That side.
00:20:44
Speaker
and then I'll peel the excess clay away. All right, once I have that, I can go ahead now and flip my component back over. I like to do this for a number of reasons. It's a lot easier to score the edges when it's flipped over, but I also really enjoy adding my personal stamp on the insides of things. So like in the case of this,
00:21:10
Speaker
goblet and I put all these larger leaf shapes on the inside of the slab and I did that while it was face down like this and I stamped it so that as someone's drinking out of it they get a unique experience that someone who isn't having that you know intimate of an engagement with my pot would get. So going ahead and taking my stamp get it nice and centered
00:21:36
Speaker
and then I like to kind of rock it and do like a little circle some kind of like rolling rocking it around in a little circle and at the very end just a small little to get the very middle of the circle because this is a fairly wide stamp and I want to make sure that all of the letters all the er and my last name is fully legible after that it kind of
00:22:03
Speaker
There's just some clay out. There's always some displacement. Whatever you're doing to the clay, there's going to be some kind of opposite and equal reaction, all that science stuff. And so clay is getting displaced off to the side and making it no longer flat. So I'll just use the side of my stamp here to press that back down and make sure that it's all nice and flush on the inside so that anyone that might be concerned about
00:22:32
Speaker
washing the dishes doesn't need to be because the glaze will fill in anything that might hold bacteria. So as I've been talking about bacteria, I'm just adding a little bit of water using a brush. There's nothing special about this water. It's just plain old water. I'm using it, applying it onto the edge and then going in with a serrated rib and pressing into the slab until I feel
00:23:01
Speaker
the template on the underside. So I'm kind of going in until I hit it. Then I'm gliding against the template. And so in doing that, I am kind of making some extra seam here. A lot of times when people put slabs together, they'll add a coil on a seam so that there's a little bit of a bridge between the two connecting sides.
00:23:28
Speaker
And I found that by doing this, displacing some of that clay, bringing that edge of the extra clay that I left when I cut it and bringing it up with the serrated rib, I found that that gives me enough extra clay that I basically have a coil built into the process. So I don't need to add another one because sometimes when I'm doing a shape like this, getting
00:23:56
Speaker
down in with the coils. It's kind of a pain in the butt. All right. Once I've got it nice and scored, and I've scored all of the edges except for the rim here, moving a bit slower because I'm doing more talking. So I'm going to add a little bit more water. But if you were just kind of going full at it, not doing all these pauses, you might not need to add that extra brushing of water.
00:24:25
Speaker
Then I'm going to take my slab here, holding the tar paper side against my hands and my thumbs just over the edge a little bit so it doesn't slide out of my hands. And I'm going to give it just a little bit of pushing this way with my thumbs. So bring it in and bending it. Kind of cup it into a cylinder. Sometimes it helps to kind of
00:24:53
Speaker
rocket, kind of roll this curve. Just slowly bringing it until it kind of wants to sit at the shape where the edges are together. Because right now, it kind of wants to sit here. So I just want to keep kind of rolling it and working it down until it wants to kind of sit a little bit more closed. All right. There we go. So sitting much more closed.
00:25:23
Speaker
you know, because of gravity it wants to fall, but staying more close. Now I'm going to go in and line up the rim here. I always make sure that the rim is what's flush. Sometimes templates kind of stretch. This is paper and so it has some flexibility. So like, you know, sometimes the bottom might get a little uneven, but I like to make sure that this rim is flush so that it's a nice level drinking edge.
00:25:50
Speaker
Then I'm just going to go in, and I call it zippering, because it always looks like a zipper to me. I'm just kind of compressing this edge. I'm holding on the sides here with the palm of my hand, kind of bringing it in and compressing with my thumbs on the tips here, kind of sliding along it to really compress this edge. And that's going to leave me with my two little boogery
00:26:20
Speaker
edges on the inside. And that's where I go back in now. And I've basically got that coil I was talking about. I like to set it on my table while I'm working on this part so that I can have the table be the back support. So I can't quite show exactly what I'm doing. But I'm basically just going to go zigzag across this to smear it to both sides. Make sure I'm nice and centered.
00:26:49
Speaker
hold it nice and together and then zigzag smear in that extra clay back and forth okay
Stabilizing and Personalizing the Goblet
00:27:00
Speaker
so we'll zigzag back and forth i'll flip it over and do this same same thing from the bottom i've been trying to reach my hand all the way down in all right and then i'm left with a fairly
00:27:17
Speaker
gnarly inside, you know, as I've kind of rolled the slab, there we go, you can kind of see like this red texture where the inside has been kind of compressed and crunched and gotten these little rivulets. Now if I leave those, the clay is more than likely going to go back to being
00:27:38
Speaker
A slap oil is going to want to go back to being a flat slab and that's going to end up meaning a crack here or some lack of roundness on the rim. So what I want to do is go in and smooth out all of the that bread texture those wrinkles and smooth out the inside With a rubber rib or a metal rib, something like that.
00:28:06
Speaker
Again, I like to use the surface of the table as my back support as I work along the interior of this form. Being really conscious on the joined edge that I'm not kind of stretching it out and causing this to tear. Because as I'm doing this, it's going to want to kind of spread this edge. I just want to make sure that that stays together.
00:28:36
Speaker
Because it'll be really difficult to get it to re-adhere if it comes apart. And I'll just do that all on the inside until it's smooth to my liking. For the sake of the demo, kind of
00:28:54
Speaker
speed forward, but I find kind of holding it from the backside, swiping away, allows me a lot more control than trying to hold it up. I'm just rolling it as I go. All right. Put that to the side and I'll grab a banding wheel. I like to work on banding wheels as much as I possibly can anytime I'm working on something where I'm
00:29:23
Speaker
going to be doing like an action in the round. You know, I teach a lot of hand-building classes and the amount of people that I see kind of moving around a spot. You know, it's like the spot will move. So always use a bandwidth if you can, because let the tools work for you. Just setting it on there, getting it vaguely centered. And then I'll start to bring in these points. I like to kind of do it a little bit at a time.
00:29:52
Speaker
kind of like a flower blooming in reverse. So I'm kind of holding it. I'm pinching a little bit on the edge here. I wonder if I can zoom. I cannot zoom. I'm just pinching along these corners at the kind of start of this join on each spike and then working my way up further towards the edge of each spike, the tip of each triangle here.
00:30:21
Speaker
kind of squeezing away any extra clay that might seep out of these seams. Just working it all in towards the middle a little at a time as a team, as a group. We like to do things together. Support in community. That's why arches are so effective that they kind of hold itself up. And the same thing happens with this kind of arched, pentagonal form.
00:30:52
Speaker
As it gets built in, it's going to hold itself up. But if you try to push just two sides all the way together, they're going to want to come apart before the other ones join them. All right. So that's all cleaned on the outside. I'm still left with all that on the inside. And I could go in now, just like I did on the main seam, and clean all this extra boogery stuff out.
00:31:22
Speaker
So you can see with this light really shining on how quickly and haphazardly I've been smoothing, but just using a nice round tool here to smear the seam into the clay and make it look like it was one piece, you know, rather than five pieces that came together. And I just continue to do that all the way around. As I've been working,
00:31:48
Speaker
can see that this just starting to come apart, which honestly kind of good for the sake of a demo, because I can talk about that now. If your seams come apart, they're going to want to stay apart. If you just kind of squish them back together, they'll just keep falling apart for whatever reason. And it's because it's not really scored up in here anymore. So rather than just squishing it back together, I'm going to take a little bit of water.
00:32:17
Speaker
I'm going to brush it in there. I'm going to take a sharp tool, just kind of bite into the wall a little bit on either side. And then I'm going to take some very squishy clay. So this is just clay that was on the edge of my mega scraper, but whatever's on the edge of the mega scraper often is very soft and gooey. So I'm just going to roll that into a really nice, small, thin coil. And then I'll put that coil.
00:32:47
Speaker
in that seam. Basically, just giving it some new material to work with. Sometimes it's nice, kind of working off to the side here, sometimes it's nice to kind of flatten one edge, a teeny tiny little coil, but just flattening one little edge, hopefully that comes through, and then laying that into the seam.
00:33:13
Speaker
All right, so just putting it in until it's all aligned and centered in there. So I'm just kind of doing this along the edge. And then I'll go back like I did when I was first joining this edge and recompress all of that back together. Letting that coil that I just put in kind of bridge that gap between the two and really allow a lot of nice, good, strong compression and joining.
00:33:43
Speaker
between the two parts. All right, great. So that's where we're at now. I'm going to leave this one here for a little while, just setting it to the side. I'm setting it on its rim and just letting it homogenize, letting all of those seams that are more wet than the rest of the clay join to the same dryness and homogenize some. And that will help it to stay together.
00:34:13
Speaker
And I'm going to be adding a second piece to this. And if that piece is wanting to blail apart, then they're not going to stay together very well. So taking my time, letting things rest between actions. And I'll go ahead and get my next slab. Goodness. I work in a basement, and bugs like to find a way in here. So there's a lot of flies and gnats and things that get a little caught in my slabs.
00:34:43
Speaker
Sorry if you're watching some, some insects stick to their doom under my mega scraper that I'm not noticing, but unfortunately it happens. Thankfully they are just a small little organism and so they'll burn out. You know, I don't have to worry about my hair or anything like that. So I also don't have to worry about bugs, which is good because there's so many of them. I find their way into my clay. I don't know what it's like for y'all.
00:35:13
Speaker
but if I leave bisque out just kind of sitting with the opening up, I come back a few weeks later to find like just so many dead bugs, just like lit like a graveyard of bugs that have somehow found their way into the center of my bisque ware and dried out, I guess. I really don't know why it kills them, but always a lot of bugs in my bisque ware.
00:35:43
Speaker
Alright, so this is that soft clay that I'm screeching off. I always just keep it to the side because it really is just this like moist stuff. I don't pick up any of the grog that's in my clay or not as much and so it's very flexible. So you just kind of keep that to the side. Alright, now I've got my slab here cleaned again. I've got this piece. I'm going to use the textured one just to show that, you know,
00:36:11
Speaker
different variety, but it's all basically the same. All right. So I'd apply this template because it's got the cutouts, the cutouts, the texture is going to hold on to the slab, you know, keep it from kind of peeling away. And so I don't need to add the water like I did, because the moisture that's in the clay is enough as is. But just like last time, I'm going to roll it on, flip it over.
00:36:42
Speaker
in the backside. In the case of my cut out templates, I am a little bit more aggressive, more active when I am compressing this backside because I want to make sure that not only is the clay fully in the texture so that my low relief
00:37:06
Speaker
is there, but I want to make sure that it's all flush so that there's not like a high area and a low area in my low relief. My goal is to have like high spots and the crevices and all the high spots at the same level. So by really compressing it from this backside and pushing it
00:37:28
Speaker
And as I push it, I can see more air bubbles come to the surface. I'm really pushing it to make sure that it goes fully into that texture and then becomes flush by the surface of the cement board. The cement board is also just really smooth.
00:37:46
Speaker
There's no canvas texture. It's completely smooth. You can even sand it if you want it smoother, I suppose. But because it's so smooth, this is a nice finished surface for this slab already. All right. So just like the body form, I'm going to cut the joining edges at a little bit of an angle and then the top and bottom flush or straight up and down.
00:38:14
Speaker
away the extra clay. All right. I can go back and flip it over. The foot, oftentimes people will be like, well, why not put the stamp in the foot? Sometimes they do. It's nice. But I find that having
00:38:34
Speaker
the opportunity to make handmade things, right? These, even if it's on the wheel, whatever, these are things made by hands. They're unique. They're one of a kind. So you have the opportunity to treat it like one of a kind art, right? It's a craft, but it's art. So you can do really fun things to that end, like adding a signature or adding a note inside of these things. I've got my tool with a second.
00:39:04
Speaker
this one this is just a nice little round ball tip two sizes i like to use the big side and then i can kind of write in this area so goblet workshop with niktorus hopefully i've got that right t-o-o or t-o-r-r
00:39:27
Speaker
then I can kind of lay it at an angle so that when it's folded up, it looks level. So that when someone's using this, maybe the person drinking out of it doesn't see this, but the person cleaning the dish might. And then the person cleaning the dish, because they're always underappreciated, gets something unique and a little bit of a reward. So you could say like, I hate doing dishes. I wish this was in the dishwasher or something.
00:39:56
Speaker
You know, gives you an opportunity for something fun. All right. Just like the body, I'll add some water to the edges that I will be joining. I like to make sure that my serrated rib is clean. If the teeth are clogged, I won't get a good bite, nice, deep serration. So I like to clean up between your cysts. And again, gliding along that edge of the temple and bringing
00:40:24
Speaker
that bit of clay that I had at an angle, now perpendicular, but bringing that clay up so that there's this extra seam. Again, I'll kind of rock this together and just bring the two edges.
00:40:40
Speaker
until they join. Oftentimes, the very edge here has difficulty curving. Now, all of this, it's tied with what's around it. And so it just flows along. But the edge, it's only tied on one side. And so this side doesn't like to curve quite as much. So sometimes I found that really hooking it with my fingers, kind of over curving.
00:41:07
Speaker
and then bringing it back out makes it so that it doesn't warp back apart. I've been talking a lot as I've been doing this. I'm going to add just a little bit more water to my drawing here. And then I'll bring the two edges together. You can see that I'm on camera. And then I will zipper them up just like I did before, holding the whole form, trying to bring that edge together using the friction of this clay.
00:41:38
Speaker
along my hand. All right. Sometimes it's nice to kind of leave the join a little bit like a teardrop, not super severe. Having that little tip allows me to then come back in, here we go, with a needle tool or rib or something like that. And make sure I've got it on camera, kind of press in with that tool and press it down and that
00:42:05
Speaker
fully joins that edge the rest of the way. All right. Then I'm left with this degree edge on the inside, setting it down on the table and doing a zigzag. Kind of tap the seam down first just to make it a little bit less high. And then I'll go back and forth to smear it all together.
00:42:29
Speaker
Alright, because this one's so small, I'm just going to go in with my thumb to compress the red texture, these like kind of wrinkly bits, all that. It's really, you know, that stuff will want to cause warping. So you want to get as much of it erased as you can.
00:42:49
Speaker
But if it's in areas like where I've written here, the parts that are really important to get this smoothing, this compression, are the edges. So this rim here and the bottom rim. Because those are really the least supported sections when this becomes a piece of just clay that doesn't have type paper.
00:43:13
Speaker
It's not quite fully closed along this edge, so I'm going to try and really squeeze that clay out. So I want to make sure that these edges are fully joined. And I can just use my hands kind of cupping like you would on the wheel, holding it and pat, rotate, hold pat, rotate, hold pat. I'm just giving a little bit of a compression to re-round this cone. Make sure it's nice and circular.
00:43:42
Speaker
All right, now that's got me pretty much clean. I forgot to clean up this edge on the inside here. I want to make sure that really the rim of both sides, both edges, top and bottom, are fully smeared and fully joined because they are really the kind of main areas that determine if it stays together. All right, so now this is ready. And now I've got my two pieces.
00:44:12
Speaker
My main goblet form has probably not fully dried enough to be stiff, but I've got a torch, so that's A-OK. Goodness gracious. Let me grab a cup here. So just grabbing a cup to kind of hold this in so it stands up here. All right. So it's nice and stable. And then I will come in with my cheese cutter here.
00:44:41
Speaker
I like to start, might not be able to tell it, but this is where the seam is. And I like to start just before it and hold my finger to support the seam so that I can glide it. And then after that, I just rotate it, continue cutting along this template edge. And what I'm doing here is kind of beveling the rim just a little.
00:45:09
Speaker
bit you know our lips don't come to a right angle when we open them or put them around a cup you know they never really come to a right angle so I've got it now to just a slight bevel you can see what I'm going to do is I'm going to torch it so that this edge this hard interior edge becomes dried out but the clay beneath it is still very squishy and so what that allows me to do
00:45:37
Speaker
is keep this defined hard edge, but squish it down so that it's rounded so that there's really this kind of like leading little sharp edge and then bringing down. So this is that corner that I've cut right now. It starts like this. I'm going to squish it down to that. So bringing this back in the center.
00:46:02
Speaker
I've got this nice torture. Let me move this out of center so I can have this torch in view. This is the kind that I like. I just use a propane. I like the camping propane containers because they have a nice broad base. Some of the tall skinny gas cans, they're not very stable. It's already not super stable as is, but this is a nice broad diameter comparatively.
00:46:30
Speaker
That's what I use for gas, even though it has a slightly lower temperature. And then I like this head for them to start because it's just a nice flick to get it going. Oh, sorry. Oh, I'm getting a back cramp as I'm standing here. Just a second to stretch. All right. So moving that back into center. And I'm just going to torch this on the far side.
00:46:58
Speaker
I don't want to be torching on the exterior because that will cause me to torch my tar paper, which is paper and flammable. So not good. But if I'm doing it from this inside edge, this little bit of tar paper on the edge doesn't really seem to get effect. Oh, goodness, that cramp is coming back. So I've not had any issues from torching on that side.
00:47:26
Speaker
But I am only torching just a little bit. Oh goodness, this cramp will not go away. Just torching a little bit to dry out this hard edge. All right, so now the hard edge is hard. And before it all homogenizes, I want to go in and squeeze and just pinch this edge.
00:47:48
Speaker
pinch the rim. If I don't do this immediately after torching, that edge is going to suck moisture back from the rest of the clay that it's attached to. And boy, I need some salt and it won't keep that nice definition after I pinch it. So there's that nice defined edge. So now that I've got that
00:48:13
Speaker
and make sure it's as round as possible. And then I'll just torch it on the inside to stiffen it up. You know, just basically doing some TV cooking magic, skipping like an hour or so. And being sure as I'm doing this to make sure that the banding wheel is not ever stopping, I wanna make sure that the torch doesn't stay in one area for too long because that will,
00:48:41
Speaker
cause one area to get too dry and then inevitably crack. So now that it's dried up a bit, oh goodness, this is great. Now that it's dried up a bit, I can flip it back over onto its rim and start to peel the template away. And I do that starting from the tips here. Sometimes they get a little buried in clay, so I'll use the tip of a knife. Just kind of get under.
00:49:12
Speaker
and lift that away. And I want to get all of these spikes lifted up first, and then I'll peel it away from the side of the form. Now that I've got that kind of flower bloomed open, I'll start to peel away from this edge, kind of separating the template from the clay.
00:49:37
Speaker
Now, the template is stuck on. So this edge right where the seam is, the clay's really going to want to stick on. So just kind of working my finger under this edge, kind of peeling it away. And then once that's pulled away, I can go back in now. And I do it on both sides and go back in and just roll it off.
00:50:05
Speaker
And I like to do this while it's on the banding wheel, like I mentioned. Because if I am kind of holding it, inevitably, I put some tension or some torque somewhere. There's some torque from my fingers holding it. And I end up not keeping the knife on the banding wheel. It stays nice and round. So before I lift it up,
00:50:31
Speaker
I've got a little bit of work to do that seem that joined edge is right here in line with this line. Pardon me. And so I'm just going to take my rib here and swipe along it and smooth it out. I like to just smooth all the way along the exterior just kind of recompressing this slab.
00:50:56
Speaker
into knowing that this is its form now, not a flat slab. It's a mug slab or a goblet slab. Then once I've got the main edge, I'll go in and work on the spike. And when I'm doing this, I just kind of work on one side of the triangle. So I'm working on the right side. And I go all the way around right side, right side, right side, right side. And then I'll do the left side, left side, left side, left side.
00:51:23
Speaker
And I do that so that I'm repeating the same action. I kind of know how I have to move my hand rather than doing left, right, left, right. And my hand has to kind of change its mindset each time, except for this little burger. Just by doing it on the one side, I can keep the same action.
00:51:45
Speaker
all the way around so that they're all uniform, and then I can do it on the other side. Now I could work on the left side closer to me, like I was working on the right side here, but I like to swipe down. And this direction is really fluid for me, but going like this is much less fluid. So now I'm going to work on the left side, pulling towards the middle. So still going that same direction with my swipe.
00:52:14
Speaker
but working on the left side of this spike of each triangle rather than the right. And then once I've got them all smooth, left and right, I'll go back and I'll use the rib to even it out into one flat plane, or one kind of curved flat plane. It's got a little bit of a swell. I just go in and do this to each edge.
00:52:44
Speaker
The area where this curve meets the cylinder form, there's always this little kind of puckers. So I like to use a soft rib on that area to kind of get a bend with my hand here and swipe along it horizontally to get all of those corners nice and cleaned. Then once that's done, I can go back on the side.
00:53:12
Speaker
All right. It leaves me with this cleaned up form. I'm going to distort it a little bit. That's A-OK. I'm going to torch it just a little bit more so that it'll hold its form as I attach it to the foot. You can see how much moisture has kind of come onto this banding wheel just from the torching because it is not an absorbent space. See, I kind of messed this up when I'm
00:53:42
Speaker
knocked it earlier. So I generally don't like to torch straight on the band and wheel. I like to get a piece of cement board, usually a little bit smaller than the board that I work on. And then that will absorb the moisture that's being steamed out.
00:54:06
Speaker
quite haphazard with this rim, but trying to keep it somewhat round. Can even use my foot here as a kind of chuck to round out the rim. I'm using them to maintain that same round shape. All right. It's starting to get to the right firmness, but all the moisture from it being upside down, still on the inside. So I'm going to kind of hold it upside down.
00:54:36
Speaker
and torch it like this. Hopefully I can get it good on camera. The reason I'm doing that is to get some heat into the center here. If I'm just torching straight down, a lot of it bounces straight back up just from heat rising. So kind of holding it upside down allows me to get more heat in there so it's steaming. I can see steam brushing by my face. I don't know if it's coming through on the video, but just getting it
00:55:04
Speaker
firm enough that I can hold it and kind of move it around without it crushing, but it doesn't need to be quite leather hard. If it is leather hard, all the better, you know, the more support it'll have within itself to stay together as I'm attaching the base here. All right, now I've got my piece, whoop, don't wanna knock that.
00:55:27
Speaker
And I want to make this edge just a little bit beveled to accommodate the bevel of my spiked bottom. And I could definitely come in with my cheese cutter here, but I have found that I really like to have specifically for this goblet join here quite a bit of extra clay. So just like I did on the
00:55:57
Speaker
side seams, the main seams. I'm going to kind of push that clay down with a serrated rib so that I'm scoring it and displacing it at the same time and making it into a bevel. So now this is beveled. It's got a little bead on the inside there ready for my goblet.
00:56:22
Speaker
All right. Cleaning off my Saturday before it gets dry so it stays nice and effective. I'm going to go in and hydrate this seam. So I have that wet and moisturized, watered, whatever. I'm going to just set my goblet top on. And I'm now looking at it. I'm sitting down. I'm looking at it.
00:56:51
Speaker
from the side rather than from the top so that I can make sure that it is level. You know, like if the goblet maybe leans one way or another. And then I'm going to kind of press it down just a little bit and peel it away. And what that has done is left me with a monoprint of where I need to score. So I'll move that cone out of the way, set this down.
00:57:19
Speaker
And I'm just, you know, there's this spot, this spot, it's little five dots. I'm going to now connect the dots just by scoring from one to the other. You could also kind of do a little circle because I am attaching a circle to a pentagon. So there is a little bit of tension within that, but the clay is squishy and moldable. So that's not really an issue. I'm just dabbing on a little bit of water.
00:57:48
Speaker
so that it sticks nice and well. Set that to the side and bring my cone back. And then I can go ahead and align it and set it on. I like to have this join on the foot not be in line with the join of the body. And ideally, actually, on the opposite side,
00:58:12
Speaker
So that puts it in the middle here of this. And I do that because having it not be by another seam, it's this singular piece. It's more held together. So I'm going to line that up, lay it on, rotate, make sure it's all nice and level. And then I will press it on. And now I'm going to work. Goodness. Maybe it's a little bit more visible from the other side. Nope.
00:58:40
Speaker
What I'm doing is I'm going to press this seam into the flat edge. So turning this circle into a pentagon, it's really only doable when it's sitting on its foot. So sorry for the lack of view here. Maybe I can. Yeah, there we go. All right. So just pressing.
00:59:09
Speaker
that edge in so that it's, oh man, it's still just a shadow. So that there's not this wedge here. See if I can get even better view here. Bear with me. That's coming up better. This little wedge here, pushing it in, turning that curve into the straight edge to match.
00:59:38
Speaker
the template that has cutouts like this one. So there's a lot of open area, a lot of negative space. And so the template is not super strong as this type of cutout. And so it kind of stretches and get some kind of distortion in the shape. So I kind of have to go in and kind of compress it and bring it back into the form. The solid shapes don't have that same issue because they hold themselves together.
01:00:08
Speaker
But once that edge is joined all the way around, I can go ahead and flip it over and work on the rim or on the inside of the foot. So moving my camera back. Sorry about all the transitions. It'd be nice to have a camera crew, but sadly it's just me. And now I've got all of that extra clay in there
01:00:37
Speaker
that I can kind of press down. And that's not quite good in that angle. I can press down and smear into the form so that it's all really nicely attached and smoothed. And it looks like one piece of clay in my big hands out of the way. So you can see, I'm just doing that all the way around. So what was a circle is now a really nice pentagon.
01:01:06
Speaker
like odd numbers, you know, you might notice on my shop, there's a lot of pentagons. That's because I am the fifth of my five person family. So, you know, just a little bit of fun number play, cause why not? All right. I'm getting that inside cleaned up however I like it. All right. My hole puncher is missing, but this is when I would go in and add that, there it is, that dishwashing hole, that drainage hole.
01:01:34
Speaker
Alright from that this mug or this goblet is pretty much ready. Not quite. I'm forgetting to take this last template off and while it's upside down. I can go ahead and peel this away. Always so satisfying and any kind of like
01:01:53
Speaker
seams or anything that don't look fully connected, I can just go in with this silicone nibbed brush that I have. I like the nice point. And just compress that join a little bit, smooth it out, smooth it all together so that it is nice and well attached. Right. Right. Do the same on this outside seam.
01:02:22
Speaker
And that's a goblet. You can see that the form itself is pretty simple. It's straight walled, tapered wall on the foot, but it allows you a lot of room for customization. See what time it is. 6.44. So we are just past an hour. I'm gonna move this to the side here, get it out of our way.
01:02:52
Speaker
And clear up my space, just a little bit as I get the next kind of things ready to discuss all this stuff away. Getting a box cutter. So I've got just a normal box cutter. Nothing special about this. I just like to use the box cutter blades instead of exactos when I am
01:03:13
Speaker
doing cutouts on my tar paper. Tar paper, it's tar and paper, and so it has quite a lot of tug. It dirties up your knives. So if you're using an X-Acto, it often ends up just breaking the tip of the X-Acto really easily. So what I want to do here is take my goblet form that is very straight walled, and I want to turn that cylinder
01:03:39
Speaker
from this to something more like this, right? Some belly in the middle here. Now, the way that I would do that, erase that, the way that I would do that is by adding some darts to my template. And the templates that I sell are really great starting place because they give you some guidelines for those darts.
01:04:06
Speaker
make a line that joins all of the bottom bits. Hopefully my new tool shows up. And if I make maybe another line a few inches down, so long as they're perpendicular, good to go. And then I'm going to draw a line joining from each of these kind of corners here, these pits.
01:04:35
Speaker
crevices, whatever the right word is here, and drawing perpendicular to the two horizontal lines. So kind of hard to tell how much it's viewable unless I bring it up to the camera, but now I've just got a grid on my piece here. What I want to do with this, oh, this will show up much better, great. What I want to do with this is cut out some little,
01:05:03
Speaker
slivers of lemon. And by slivers of lemon, I mean that it's a lemon shape that's really squashed into a sliver. That drawing didn't go super well. The line is too broad. But I just want to cut a little bit away at each of these points and ideally doing it the same amount on each of them. So I like to do, just like I did on cleaning up
01:05:32
Speaker
the point of the clay, doing all of the rights, doing the same action, and then doing all of the less and doing the same action. That allows me to basically just hold my tool and do a curve like this. Just repeat that action. Now, I don't want to cut too much away. Once you cut away, it's cut. So I would advise definitely starting with smaller
01:06:02
Speaker
smaller darts than larger and building up to a larger size. So like cutting it, putting it together, seeing how you feel about it. I do want this to be a separate piece here so that this is like one long panel. So this is going to get cut out here for me, but that's definitely not necessary. You know, you could take this dart and bring it up into the form, lifting up that belly
01:06:30
Speaker
you know, kind of changing the profile of it, but I just, I like how that'll be. All right, and then I'm just gonna go in with my knife here, holding on the far side of the tar paper and cutting away from my hand. I'm gonna sit down to do it, so hopefully I'll stay in view of the camera. But again, just doing that same side on each of them, following the lines that I sketched out
01:07:00
Speaker
and just going nice and slow. Like I mentioned, that friction of the tar paper can make it kind of difficult to slow a nice cut. So that's why it's important to go slow as you're working. Whoo! There's that friction. I'm gonna go back in and just clean up the edge. But it's okay if these cuts are not perfect. Oh, goodness.
01:07:30
Speaker
because we're working with clay and so it can definitely kind of squish around to fit. Now I've laser cut these so that they're as close as possible to being the shape, but you can definitely make an ovular goblet even though it's made for a round goblet.
01:08:00
Speaker
There's definitely some freedom in this. In quiet for a moment so I can focus on finishing up. That's going to leave me with this gladiator belt looking kind of thing. But once it's all joined together and these darts are brought in, it's going to give me some waste, a little bit of profile, some shape, some body,
01:08:29
Speaker
on my goblet here and by having that go all the way around I get this really nice faceted goblet form and that aspect of adding darts can be applied to
01:08:46
Speaker
really anything that works really well on joining edges. But as you can see, you can do it on the insides of forms. So likewise on this cone, it could go from being, that's not super enough, being something like that to being, let's get to the dry spot, something more like that.
01:09:10
Speaker
more interest in it. And so that plus a goblet top that has a little bit of curve there, you get a much more interesting form. So these darts that you can add into customize really offer a lot of opportunity for form and for shape. So there's the customization that you can do within just a texture or surface. And then within that, there's also the customization that you can do for the form.
01:09:40
Speaker
All right, I feel like I've just been talking and talking and talking and talking. And that's all I've really got for this evening. Are there any questions? I can definitely switch back to me as a person. Might be a little bit more inviting. All right. If anybody has any questions, go ahead and type it into the comments and Mike will answer them.
01:10:08
Speaker
and make sure I have the comments visible. There is one loading up. It's my pleasure. Pleasure, Shreya. My pleasure. All right, well, oh, what kind of clay do I use? I use a red stoneware, tone six red stoneware. So it's pretty chocolaty. It's not a commercial clay. It's just 50-50 red art and Hawthorne.
01:10:37
Speaker
So if you go to the clay store, whatever you've got in your neighborhood and get a 50 pound bag, a Hawthorne 50 pound bag of red, put them together with some water. That's all I use. Nice and simple and easy. I have a question for you, Mike. What is the tool you use to smooth out your clay? This one? Yes.
01:11:01
Speaker
I call it a mega scraper because I just think that's more fun. But I think the actual name for it is a paint guard. Because it's used as like painters that spray, I guess. They'll like put it up and then it'll like spray and it'll like protect with the spray. I don't really know I'm not a painter but...
01:11:24
Speaker
that i think is what it's it's used for works exceptionally well for smoothing because it's got just a little bit of flex so i can like really add some compression into areas that are maybe fighting me but yep that's that and i i offer the mega scrapers as well as the templates on my website so if you
01:11:51
Speaker
don't wanna go to the store to find one of these, I do sell them. Thickness of tar paper do I normally use? I hope there's not more of the question, because I'm just looking at the kind of previews of the chats that they come up. I use the 30 pound tar paper, and I use that because my low relief at 30 pound is a nice thick lift, but at 15 pound,
01:12:16
Speaker
you know it's half the thickness and it doesn't quite have the same read. That said the 15 pound if I was doing just something like this where I was just trying to get a form would work great because it'd be really flexible and I could get nice soft smooth curves. So I almost always use the 30 but there are definitely times for the 15 or where the 15 works great. Any more questions? It doesn't
01:12:46
Speaker
look like it. All righty. Well, Mike. Oh, Frank out here. Have you ever wood fired your work from Charlie Charles? I, I've wood fired my work once or twice, but I've never been super satisfied with the look on this particular series. I don't know. Oftentimes wood firing, there's so much added in the atmosphere and then the firing surface that unless it's something more solid shaped like this,
01:13:16
Speaker
You know, something like this usually ends up looking too busy, at least for me. So don't often do too much atmospheric fire and just for that reason. I like control. So with that, that's going to be the, oh, right here. We're quick. This will be the last question. Would it be cool if I made a couple from this video and tried it out? I don't want to step on your style.
01:13:41
Speaker
Oh, absolutely, go for it. That's the whole reason I sell these. I started doing these templates in my studio a while ago and I realized just how...
01:13:51
Speaker
useful they were for handbuilding. I got into ceramics despising handbuilding. I did not like really anything that wasn't on the wheel or with a mold. And this really kind of opened the door for me because it's really supportive in that way. So yeah, absolutely take it, run with it, however far, whatever direction you want to go, I will not be offended.
01:14:15
Speaker
You know, ceramics is so much about sharing of knowledge. It's so much open source information. You know, glazes wouldn't exist unless, you know, technology was shared. So yeah, absolutely. Take it. I won't be offended.
01:14:31
Speaker
I mean, if you start making this pattern, I might be like, Hey buddy. Cool beans. Thanks. I'll be sure to tag you on my instill when I start making them. Absolutely love it. So with that, that's going to be the last question. Mike, you absolutely crushed today. Thank you so much for doing this workshop. I learned a lot and I know everybody attended that learned a lot as well. The replay for anybody that was here or will be available either later today or probably early morning tomorrow. Thanks again, Mike. You have a great rest of your day. Thank y'all.
01:15:02
Speaker
Have a good one, you as well.