Pottery Making For Dummies Cheat Sheet

This Cheat Sheet has the high-level dos, don’ts, and must-haves to get you making pottery. You can find the pottery supplies you actually need, handy household swaps, the five stages of clay, a decoder for those weird cone numbers, and the beginner mistakes worth dodging. No fancy studio or hot Ghost boyfriend required.

Your beginner pottery supply checklist

One of pottery’s best kept secrets? You need way less stuff than the internet would have you believe. Hand building and wheel throwing both rely on the same simple tool kit, and half the time you have a perfectly good swap hiding in your kitchen drawer. Here’s what you actually need to get started with making pottery:

• Clay: If you’re making anything you plan to eat from, drink from, or wash, such as mugs, bowls, and plates, go with stoneware. If you’re making decorative pieces or planters, earthenware is fine. When in doubt, choose stoneware. She’s the Sensible Sally.
• Wire tool: This tool is for slicing clay off the block, checking for air bubbles, and releasing finished pieces from the wheel or bench.
• Rib tool: Also known as a kidney tool. You use it to blend coils, smooth seams, compress slabs and bases, and remove throwing rings. Start with a flexible rubber rib.
• Needle tool: Tiny but mighty. Use it for scoring before joins, popping air bubbles, leveling rims, and scribing your code onto pieces.
• Loop tool: Also called a ribbon tool. This tool is for trimming excess clay, thinning walls, carving decoration, and scooping out solid forms. This one is actually worth buying. A bent paperclip is technically an option, but so is eating soup with a fork.
• Paddle tool: Also known, affectionately and dramatically, as the spanker. Use it for smacking out lumps, shaping vessels, and compressing walls and seams.
• Sponge: Your eraser, smoother, and moisture controller in one. Any kitchen sponge works, but the round yellow ones tend to fit your hand best.
• Water bowl and damp cloth: You need a small container of clean water for dipping your fingers, plus a damp cloth to keep your clay workable while you go. Think moist, not swampy.
• Glazing starter kit: Brush-on glazes are the home studio hero. Add a few brushes, from fine detail to wide fan, underglazes for decorative painting, and a pencil for sketching designs. The graphite burns away completely in the kiln, which feels like a little pottery magic trick.

You also need a surface that is flat, easy to wipe down, and close to water. Keep it away from direct sunlight, fans, heaters, and air-conditioning vents, because they dry clay unevenly and can cause cracking. Skip the baking paper barrier and work directly on a wipeable table. Avoid carpets, beds, and fabric surfaces. Clay needs a surface that pushes back, not your good linen.

The five universal stages of clay in pottery making

Pottery is as much about what you do, as when you do it. Every piece you make passes through five stages. Think of them as the life-cycle stages of your clay. Most pottery beginner heartbreak comes from doing the right thing at the wrong time, such as trying to add a handle to a bone-dry mug and wondering why it’s giving emotional damage. Use this guide to work with your clay, not against it.

Cracking the clay confusion: Cones and clay types for pottery makers

Cones are small ceramic pyramids that bend inside the kiln to show what’s really happening in there. Potters use them as a universal language instead of just relying on temperature readings. The main detail for pottery makers to know is this: Cone numbers with a zero in front are in the low-fire range. So Cone 06 is not the same as Cone 6, and Cone 04 fires hotter than Cone 06. Think of the zero like a minus sign. Minus 4 is warmer than minus 6. Comprende, Claypadre?

Here’s how the two main clay families compare.

Glaze disasters decoded for pottery makers

Glaze is chemistry in a kiln, so occasionally it goes a bit rogue. That’s not failure. That’s ceramics. The golden rule: Your glaze must match your clay’s temperature — or else. And resist opening the kiln early: Wait until it’s below 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit) because rushing the reveal invites thermal shock and big, bad, nasty cracks. The wait is part of the pottery making process.

Beginner pottery tips worth discovering early

Even the best glaze or the steadiest hand won’t save you if the fundamentals are off. The following tips cover the habits that save you the most heartache. Learn them now, and you’ll skip most of the mistakes that trip up beginners. These tips are your pottery making guide for life:

1. ‍Wedge your clay every time. Wedging gets your clay ready to behave. It evens out the moisture, improves the texture, and helps remove sneaky air pockets that can crack, chunk, or straight up explode in the kiln.
2. ‍Use water sparingly when hand building. In hand building, water is for joining and smoothing, not giving your pot a full spa treatment. Too much water makes clay weak and slumpy. Use a damp sponge for targeted moisture instead of wet hands.
3. ‍Treat water like lubricant when wheel throwing. On the wheel, water helps your hands glide over the clay. Add water when you feel drag in your hands, sponge out the base regularly, and always dry out the inside before cutting your piece off the wheel. Pooled water in the base is one of the classic causes of cracking.
4. ‍Make a test tile before glazing something you love. A business card–sized test tile takes minutes to make and can save you from kiln shelf heartbreak. It shows you the real color, surface, and flow of a glaze on your specific clay body before you put it on a finished piece and hope for the best.
5. ‍Remember that clay shrinks. Most clay bodies shrink around 10 to 15 percent from wet to glaze fired, and porcelain can shrink up to 20 percent. Keep this in mind for lids, sets, tiles, and anything that needs to fit. Also aim for even wall thickness, because uneven sections shrink at different rates and love to crack at the joins. Cute.
6. ‍Wipe your vessel before glazing. Before glazing, give your bisque piece a quick wipe with a barely damp sponge. Invisible dust and skin oils can stop glaze from bonding properly, causing crawling, which is when the glaze pulls away in bald patches. A 10-second wipe saves a lot of kiln rage.
7. ‍Clean up while everything is still wet. Dry clay dust contains silica, and inhaled silica is bad news. Wet wipe your benches, mop rather than sweep, wear a fitted particle mask for dusty jobs, and never eat or drink in your clay space.
8. ‍Beg, borrow, and steal. Like a true artist. Connect with Crockd. For step-by-step tutorials, find us at @getcrockd on Instagram. For the ins and outs of running a pottery studio, follow @crockd.studios on Instagram. And for a full school of clay, head to the Crockd YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/c/Crockd.