How To Make Pottery At Home: All Materials & Equipment You Need

Clay

Clay is nothing but fine-grained earth that can be shaped when wet. It contains sand, minerals, tiny rocks and other natural soil components in different concentrations. It comes in a variety of textures and colors depending on their particle size and composition. Clays that have high concentrations of iron oxide tend to have a rusty, red or orange appearance while those with no iron at all look gray or even white, which is the case with porcelain clay.

There are 3 types of clays: stoneware, earthenware and porcelain clay. They are all used for different purposes and have different firing temperatures as well as water absorption and shrinkage percentages.

Stoneware clay is the most versatile and easiest to work with. If you are a beginner who's trying pottery making at home for the first time, we recommend you to get stoneware clay. It comes in a variety of colors from white to dark brown. Once fired, stoneware clay is non-porous, which means it’s capable of holding liquid without having to glaze it. 

Earthenware tends to be thicker, heavier but weaker than stoneware. It’s also easy to work with but it needs to be glazed if you want your pottery to be permeable. This extra step requires extra time and materials, which might not be ideal for beginners. 

Porcelain clay is quite difficult to shape and requires a generous amount of water that needs to be strategically added to the mix while shaping it. If you don’t add enough water it quickly dries out and if you add too much water it can easily lose its shape and collapse. Learning how to work with porcelain clay takes time and a lot of practice, so it might not be the best option for those who want to try pottery making at home for the very first time.

While porcelain pottery looks beautiful, you might want to wait until you’re more experienced to give it a try.

Pottery Wheels

Potters and ceramic artists use different pottery making techniques depending on the kind of items they want to make. If you want to make pottery at home, you can absolutely do it without a pottery wheel, but beware that you will be limited to creating objects based on molds or entirely shaped by hand, which will most likely result in pieces with imprecise and uneven looks.

If you are planning on making pottery at home more than once and especially any kind of round ceramic ware like pots, cups, plates or jugs, we encourage you to get a pottery wheel so you can unleash your imagination and create as many pieces as you want, the right way. 

Generally, pottery wheels range in price from just over $400 to almost $1,500. Budget pottery wheels, like the Speedball Artista Pottery Wheel, cost around $500. Similar models are  perfect for beginners and those who want to start making pottery at home.

Such basic models however, are slower, less durable and have a smaller clay load capacity than a high-tech professional model. It all depends on how much you’d want to use it.

Check out our full article on what to consider when buying a pottery wheel if you want to buy a pottery wheel to make pottery at home.

Further Reading: The Best Pottery Wheels: A Buyer's Guide.

Kilns

Kilns are a type of oven capable of producing temperatures high enough to fire things like pottery and bricks; it simply dries the clay and turns it into ceramics once you’re done shaping it.

One way or another, clay needs to be fired and we strongly recommend you to get a kiln to do so. Kitchen ovens don’t get hot enough to fire pottery. You can always pit fire clay at home, but it’s quite complicated to set it up and even more difficult to achieve the specific temperature needed for specific kinds of clay. If it’s too hot your clay will melt and if it’s not hot enough it won’t dry properly. 

Depending on whether you’re working with earthenware, stoneware, or porcelain, the temperature range of the kiln you need will vary; and an electric kiln can easily be adjusted to fit your needs. 

Before you choose what kiln to buy, you might want to consider things like the kind of glaze you’ll be using, the size and quantities of the pieces you’ll make as well as the space you have available at home. 

We have written a comprehensive guide on the best ceramic kilns for home use. We recommend you to give it a read and get the kiln that best fits your needs.

Tools

Although you can technically start making pottery at home with just clay, a pottery wheel and a kiln, there are endless tools that can help you create more precise, well-shaped and professional-looking pieces.

Your pottery at home kit should have the following tools:

• Needles: Used for measuring thickness, carving, trimming and piercing clay.
• Cutter wire: Used for dividing large blocks of clay into chunks.
• Ribbon tools: Used for trimming and carving when shaping clay by hand.
• Scrappers: Used for final smoothing of the pieces.
• Fettling Knives: They are very versatile, they can be used to separate molds, trim, pierce, carve, sculpt and even cut chunks of clay.
• Chamois cloth: Used to compress the clay while it’s on the wheel to create smooth surfaces.
• Calipers: Used to measure the distance between two opposite sides.
• Brushes: Used for a variety of purposes but especially for glazing or applying slip.
• Sponges: Used for shaping and cleaning surfaces.
• Other modeling tools depending on the exact pieces you’d want to make.
• Towels and aprons: Making pottery at home can get messy! A few towels and an apron will help you keep yourself and your space as clean as possible. 

Glaze and other decorating materials

There are quite a few pottery decorating techniques out there. However, if you are just getting started with pottery making at home, we recommend you to stick to glaze and paints while you learn how to use other decorating materials and more complex decoration techniques like carving or transfer printing.

Glazing is one of the most common and easiest decorating techniques. Glaze is a liquid, very much like paint, that gives ceramics a smooth, glass-like surface. It comes in any color and it’s used to decorate and waterproof pieces. And, when it comes to paints, liquid latex or acrylic paints are the best for decorating pottery at home.

Glaze and paints are cheap and easily available online and in pretty much any art supply store

How To Start Pottery At Home

The first step to start making pottery at home is to get the right tools and equipment. All the above mentioned items are easily available online. You can find the pottery wheels and kilns here at SoulCeramics.com. All the other materials, including the clay can be found in most art supply stores.

If you are a beginner and want to start with the basics, we recommend you to get clay, a small ceramic kiln, a basic pottery wheel, and a few modeling tools. You can always upgrade your equipment as you learn new techniques to make pottery at home.

If you are interested in learning more about pottery and ceramics, check out our knowledge center where you can learn everything you need to know about pottery and knife making as well as glass fusing.

Good luck!

Additional resources on pottery

Ceramics is one of the most ancient industries going back thousands of years. Once humans discovered that clay could be found in abundance and formed into objects by first mixing with water and then firing, a key industry was born. The oldest known ceramic artifact is dated as early as 28,000 BCE (BCE = Before Common Era), during the late Paleolithic period. It is a statuette of a woman, named the Venus of Dolní Věstonice, from a small prehistoric settlement near Brno, in the Czech Republic. In this location, hundreds of clay figurines representing Ice Age animals were also uncovered near the remains of a horseshoe-shaped kiln.

The first examples of pottery appeared in Eastern Asia several thousand years later. In the Xianrendong cave in China, fragments of pots dated to 18,000-17,000 BCE have been found. It is believed that from China the use of pottery successively spread to Japan and the Russian Far East region where archeologists have found shards of ceramic artifacts dating to 14,000 BCE.

Use of ceramics increased dramatically during the Neolithic period, with the establishment of settled communities dedicated to agriculture and farming. Starting approximately in 9,000 BCE, clay-based ceramics became popular as containers for water and food, art objects, tiles and bricks, and their use spread from Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The early products were just dried in the sun or fired at low temperature (below 1,000°C) in rudimentary kilns dug into the ground. Pottery was either monochrome or decorated by painting simple linear or geometric motifs.

It is known that, around 7,000 BCE, people were already using sharp tools made from obsidian, a natural occurring volcanic glass. The Roman historian Pliny reported that the first man-made glass was accidentally produced by Phoenician merchants in 5,000 BCE, when, while resting on a beach, they placed cooking pots on sodium-rich rocks near a fire. The heat from the fire melted the rocks and mixed them with the sand, forming molten glass.

Archeologists have not been able to confirm Pliny’s recount. Instead, simple glass items, such as beads, have been discovered in Mesopotamia and Egypt dating to 3,500 BCE. At the beginning of the Bronze Age, glazed pottery was produced in Mesopotamia. However, it was not until 1,500 BCE that Egyptians started building factories to create glassware for ointments and oils.

One of the first breakthroughs in the fabrication of ceramics was the invention of the wheel, in 3,500 BCE. The introduction of the wheel allowed for the utilization of the wheel-forming technique to produce ceramic artifacts with radial symmetry.

Meanwhile, ceramic pottery evolved in its use of increasingly elaborated paintings, so that these objects eventually became genuine pieces of art. Decorations also involved the use oxidizing and reducing atmosphere during firing to achieve special effects. Greek Attic vases of the 6th and 5th centuries BCE are considered the apex of this evolution.

Throughout the 16th century CE (CE = Common Era), earthenware remained the main class of Ceramic products manufactured in Europe and the Middle East. The Chinese were the first to introduce high temperature kilns capable of reaching up to 1350°C, and, around 600 CE, developed porcelain (a material with less than 1% porosity) from kaolin clay. During the Middle Ages, trade through the Silk Road allowed for the introduction and diffusion of porcelain throughout Islamic countries first and later in Europe, due in large part to the journeys of Marco Polo.

By the 15th century the earliest blast furnaces were developed in Europe, capable of reaching up to 1,500°C. They were used to melt iron and were initially constructed from natural materials. When synthetic materials with better resistance to high temperatures (called refractories) were developed in the 16th century, the industrial revolution was born. These refractories created the necessary conditions for melting metals and glass on an industrial scale, as well as for the manufacture of coke, cement, chemicals, and ceramics.

Since then, the ceramic industry has gone through a profound transformation. Not only have traditional ceramics and glass become ubiquitous, but over the years new products have been developed to take advantage of the unique properties of these materials, such as their low thermal and electrical conductivity, high chemical resistance, and high melting point. Around 1850 the first porcelain electrical insulators were introduced, starting the era of technical ceramics.

After World War II, ceramics and glass have contributed to the growth of many technologically advanced fields, including electronics, optoelectronics, medical, energy, automotive, aerospace and space exploration. In addition, innovations in ceramic processing and characterization techniques have enabled the creation of materials with tailored properties that meet the requirements of specific and customized applications. In recent years, ceramic processing has gained new vigor from nanotechnology, which is allowing manufacturers to introduce materials and products with unconventional properties, such as transparent ceramics, ductile ceramics, hyperelastic bones, and microscopic capacitors.

All these advances are expected to drive the global ceramic and glass industry to become a nearly 1.1 trillion dollar market in 2023, up from an estimated $800 billion in 2018.

A summary of the most relevant milestones in the history of ceramics and glass is provided in the table below.