Primitive Pottery: A Complete Guide for Beginners
Pottery making is a popular hobby for millions of people today which is not surprising because just about everyone has enjoyed playing with mud from the time they were children. What does surprise me is that practicing such an ancient craft is dependent on so much expensive equipment. It seems that the making of primitive […]
Why My Coil Pottery Classes Are The Best in the Southwest
My traditional coil pottery classes are designed to give students the full experience, exploring ancient ruins, examining museum collections and recreating prehistoric coil pottery as accurately as possible. Keep reading to discover what is involved. Some things are really hard to learn from reading a book (or a blog post), and that is especially true […]
The History of Coil Pottery in the Southwest
The American Southwest has a rich coil pottery tradition that reaches back over 2000 years. Ceramic technology spread north into this area from Mexico before the time of Christ and over the centuries since has matured and diversified in expression. Today nearly every Native American group in the Southwest possesses a unique style of pottery […]
What is a Puki and How is it Used to Make Pottery
If you ever learn about Native American Pueblo pottery or really any sort of traditional Southwestern pottery you will eventually hear the work “puki” used. And if you are new to Southwest pottery you will no doubt wonder “what is a puki”? No worries, I am here to set the record straight. I have been […]
How to Make Hand Built Pottery
I came at pottery backwards. It seems most people learn pottery on the wheel first and then explore hand building later. I learned to hand build first, this is probably the reason why hand building has remained my passion and the primary way that I form pottery. Because I am a hand building guy, I […]
12 Hand Building Clay & Coil Pottery Techniques
While I enjoy making pottery in other ways, there is nothing like the feeling of hand building clay, knowing that you built this pot with no help from machinery. It gives you and your art work a primitive connection to the earth, just you and the clay alone in the studio, surprising and beautiful things […]
25 Coil Pot Ideas Inspired by the Ancient Southwest
Sometimes I hit a creative dead-end and need some inspiration, I think we all do at some point. When it comes to making a coil pot most of the ideas and tutorials I see on the internet these days look the same, I want something fresh. If you are like me then look further, I […]
How to Make a Coil Pot?
For back to basics pottery making you can’t go wrong with a coil pot, no machinery or fancy equipment aiding you, just you and the clay mano a mano. I first learned coil pottery as a teenager when I was trying to reproduce ancient Southwest pottery, my school didn’t teach coil pottery making so I […]