The Finishing Touches for Teapots 

Black Cleaver

I’ve been there. I spent almost two years looking for a studio and RU-vid videos of makers at work fuelled my appetite for some time. Thanks so much for taking your time to watch, it honestly means so much.

I have. The thing is, grinding the lid isn’t just about grinding it in one orientation. When I’m holding the lid and pot in two hands, I’m applying downward pressure and sideways pressure, to smooth the sides too. Whereas if I do the same thing on the wheel, I can only really push downward, so yes it might be faster, but I can’t polish the entirety of the lid in the same way.

I use both depending on how well the lid fits, how rough it is, etc.

Experience and confidence. This is a person who's carried a lot of loaded wareboards, packed a lot of kilns, handled pottery at every stage of dryness, so on and so forth. That also means he's spilled a fair few wareboards in his time, but hardly a drop in the bucket compared to his volume of total work. He know's he's unlikely to drop anything, and in the case that does happen, it'll put him behind a bit - But the savings in efficiency versus the relatively small risk of breaking a few pots that can always be remade? Absolutely worth it. A beginner wouldn't do this, of course. They haven't learned how to let go of their pieces, a good piece of pottery still represents a lot of work and effort to them, and their volume of output isn't nearly as high. They can afford to take the time to handle pots individually. Florian has clearly left that mindset behind a while ago.

You're seeing all the steps at once, and all the fancy tools used to do it. You're seeing someone who has done this for years, as an apprentice under the guidance of a master. You don't start here, and you don't start here for a reason. This is like 6 or 7 different skills all being used to make one item. Start with one. Learn to throw simple shapes on a wheel, or forego the wheel entirely and just try hand-shaping clay. There are videos you can use to figure out how to make your own clay from clay soil, if you want to do it on the cheap. You could also just get some modelling clay for the purpose, understanding that it's not the same thing used here, and that doesn't matter so much if you're not throwing the clay. Get used to how clay acts. Get familiar with shaping it, working it. Try to make useful little items - Nothing too demanding, just little things that don't need to do anything demanding. Find a way to make the skill you're developing useful, or fun. Then take a step up. If you learn to throw well, you could start firing your thrown pots, maybe just in a makeshift wood kiln. Just a fancy firepit you could make out of dirt. Skip the trimming step until you're ready to try and learn that skill. How you get started depends on what you have access to. Know that you CAN learn to do this - The only question is WILL you? It's a valid choice to choose not to learn one skill, especially in favor of focusing on another. Not everyone needs to be a potter. And no one can be a potter, a bookbinder, a machinist, a 3D modeler, a knitter, an embroiderer, and whatever dozen other things could catch just about anyone's fancy. You can't do everything - That's okay. Pick one, two, maybe three things you want to be good at. Definitely start with one; focus makes things easier. You only need one. Start at the beginning, at the most basic thing you can think of, then figure out a way to be even more basic. Discover the fundamentals, the underlying principles, one at a time, and begin assembling the skillset one step in front of the other. Overwhelming yourself by looking at everything a master can do won't help. Take their advice one piece at a time. "Okay, Florian does this one thing. Can I figure out how to do that one thing too?" Our ancestors scrabbled every human skill under the sun out of the dirt, and it was hard, and they were bad at it, because there was no one else to show them how to do it any other way. We got from there, to here, and it's easy to overlook the immense amount of effort that took - And how much of it you can skip straight over, because we HAVE people that do those things, that know how it ought to be done. You know where to start, where the ancients had to just start where they were. But knowing the end can make the beginning seem overwhelming. There's no shame in being overwhelmed. It is just the first obstacle that you, personally, will have to overcome to make progress. Which means you know where to start. If you want to.

@@Woodledude thank you so much for taking the time to type all that to advice me i really appreciate it Thank you sir.

@@Woodledudethank you for writing this, it really helped to read this when I was feeling overwhelmed by entirely different pursuits than pottery. Your words were a real comfort

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