Four Tips for Making a Box by Throwing Clay and Altering It

Throwing clay on the pottery wheel and altering it into shapes that don’t look like they were wheel thrown is a lot of fun. Making a cube or box in this way also has its advantages because you have far fewer seams than you would if you were slab building and therefore far fewer chances for cracks to form.

Throwing and altering is the method Donovan Palmquist uses to make his tea caddies (storage boxes for tea). He alters a bottomless (well, almost bottomless) cylinder into a box, then adds slab bottoms and tops, and then a flange and a lid. In today’s video, I’ve compiled four tips from his video Forming, Finishing and Firing: An Approach to the Wood Kiln, that will help you if you would like to try this project.