Bottles. Short. Tall. Simple and elegant. A form I have neglected until recently. Here’s how you, too, can throw lovely bottles on the wheel:
First…learn to make teapots…
Then, make more teapots…
…lots and lots of teapots…
After you have learned how to make teapots…
make more teapots…
Now, you are ready to learn how to make bottles. First, try and fail to throw bottles on the wheel. Make many bottles. Fail many times. Try again. Fail again. Your simple, “elegant to be” bottles will not have a smooth transition. They will have flat spots on the shoulders…
Make more bottles. Decide to give up. You cannot make a “good enough” bottle. But then…remember that you can make teapots!
Nice teapots. Making a teapot is a very time consuming, detailed endeavor but it is not difficult for you. So, sit back down at the wheel and make bottles. Then make more. You will get better at it.
The point here is that throwing a simple bottle that has good form and proportion as well as a smooth vertical transition is very difficult. When you see one that is handcrafted, one of a kind, know that the artist has invested a lot of time and thought to produce that one, simple bottle.
You can receive email notification of my blog posts. They don’t happen often…too busy learning how to make bottles.
Side note…that last picture was taken with my phone (soon our phone cameras will be as good as our Canons). We will be installing a soft box in our studio photobooth soon…yippee! Just using some side lights for now.
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