When working with clay, the right preparation is key. Every pottery session on the wheel starts with wedging the clay to get rid of any air bubbles, but also to homogenise the material and break its shape memory. But wedging is only part of the preparation needed to create a ceramic object.

Glazes are just as much a craft of their own as throwing on the wheel, and it's through them that ceramic pieces really come to life.

All glazes used for the objects shown on this website are composed by me — some made from scratch, others based on recipes from other potters.

When throwing objects from the hump, you centre a big piece of clay on the wheel to create many objects out of one large block. It's a technique used to quickly throw similar objects, which are thrown and lifted off the top of the clay body.

The piece-by-piece approach is probably the most common way to throw on the wheel. You start out with an idea of the finished product in mind, and weigh out a block of clay to the amount you need. Next, you wedge the clay and throw it on the wheel to give it the shape you had in mind, before lifting it off and starting on the next piece.

There are many steps when creating a ceramic object, and it's in between the major steps that the handling of the objects takes place. Handling refers to the smaller steps, like moving the pieces on wooden boards to places where they can rest until you're able to continue working on them, cleaning them up and smoothing them, removing glaze where it's not supposed to be, and many other movements.