Mastering Hand Building teaches everything you need to know about building with clay by hand, from the basics of coils and slabs through more complex form design.

Ceramics are always popular with crafters, and hand building with low-fire earthenware is a natural place to start. This book by artist Shay Amber will inspire even the most intimidated beginner.

Join the home pottery revolution! Whether you have access to a communal studio or not, hand building projects can travel just about anywhere. Take your clay outside or work at the kitchen table, with instruction from best-selling ceramics author Sunshine Cobb. In this book, you’ll find all the necessary fundamentals, including a thorough discussion of clay as well as helpful tips for keeping your body and mind in top shape. Then pick the path that’s right for you in the chapters that follow. Develop new skills and unlock your own creativity as you explore: Sculptural projects like miniature animals and plants. Functional items like scoops, a citrus reamer, and a coffee pour-over vessel. Mixed media projects including a candlestick holder, mobile, and a soap dish. All along the way, skill-building is front and center, with conversational instructions and tips to help you make pieces you’re proud to show off. Gallery work from some of today’s top artists are sure to inspire potters of all levels. What will you make first? For beginners and those returning to ceramics, the Essential Ceramics Skills series from Quarry Books offer the fundamentals along with fresh, contemporary, and simple projects that build skills progressively.

From pinch pots to coiled boxes to soft slab tableware, mastering hand building is a lifelong pursuit. In this book, Sunshine Cobb covers all the foundational skills, with lessons for constructing both simple and complex forms from clay. Ceramic artists will also find a variety of next-level techniques and tips: designing templates and replicating pieces, lidded vessels, using molds, a variety of decorative techniques, and other avenues of exploration are all inside. Artist features and inspirational galleries include work from today's top working artists, such as Bryan Hopkins, Lindsay Oesterritter, Liz Zlot Summerfield, Bandana Pottery, Shoko Teruyama, Courtney Martin, Sam Chung, Deborah Schwartzkopf, and many more. Take your hand building skills—and your artwork—to the next level with Mastering Hand Building. The Mastering Ceramics series is for artists who never stop learning. With compelling projects, expert insight, step-by-step photos, and galleries of work from today’s top artists, these books are the perfect studio companions. Also available from the series: Mastering the Potter's Wheel and Mastering Kilns and Firing.

The technique is simple; the results are gorgeous! Susan Hallss stunningly refined, sophisticated, and modern projects range from a mug and vase to a teapot and triple herb planter. Beginning with the basic pinch pot, they move on to wider, taller, and composite forms, all with stunning options for color and surface decoration.

Delineates basic methodology and suggests variations in the craft of handbuilding with clay, with a study of and illustrations of the work of ten professional ceramicists

An easy-to-follow beginner's workshop in creating the human form and self-supporting, standing animals in clay simple. This revised and updated edition includes 4 new projects.

Atkin takes the mystery out of hand-building by showing precisely what happens at each point in the process. Simple, creative projects clearly illuminate coil, slab, molds, and pinch techniques--all demonstrated in clear step-by-step photos.

In Handbuilt, A Potter's Guide, pottery expert Melissa Weiss shows you the basics of crafting without a wheel, how to harvest and work wild clay, and using natural glazes. Handbuilt pottery is the perfect way for new potters to dive into this unique medium because it doesn't require access to a potter's wheel. In Handbuilt, A Potter's Guide, Melissa Weiss takes an organic approach to harvesting and working with local clays, and even shows you how to mix your own glazes to use on functional pottery for use at home. Students of pottery the world over have traveled to North Carolina to attend Weiss's classes. Now you don't have to! In this book, Melissa provides you with a solid course on slab and pinch-pot techniques that allow beginning students to master the basics and progress through finished wares. Looking to go a little deeper? Melissa also offers her unique knowledge of how to dig and process local clays for use in pottery, and for the techniques she has developed for creating unique glazes with ash, salt, and other dry materials. Melissa will also introduce you talented contemporary potters, who will share their work, tips, advice, and techniques. Learn the basics of handbuilding and more with this engaging guide.

Cob, a structural composite of earth, water, straw, clay, and sand, has been used for centuries, in virtually all parts of the world, to create homes ranging from mud huts in Africa to lavish adobe haciendas in Latin America. This practical and inspiring hands-on guide teaches anyone to build a cob dwelling.