Electives · The vocabulary problem

Every word in this building is completely innocent. Not one of them sounds like it.

Last Tuesday I watched an instructor lean over the wedging table and tell four brand new members, in the most sincere voice I have ever heard, that the trick is to get your whole body over it and really push down with your hips. Nobody moved. One guy found something fascinating on the floor. And she kept going, because she was right, and because that is genuinely how you wedge clay.

An illustration of an instructor in a green apron leaning over a lump of clay on a wedging table, explaining a technique with total sincerity, while three adults around her visibly try not to laugh
That is a real instructor giving a real instruction, and she is completely correct. Everybody else in that room is also correct, and every one of them is having a hard time about it.
Jump to a section
Why I wrote this down The whole thing in one paragraph The Straight Face Protocol Field guide: the wheel and the trimming bench Protocol one: pulling a handle in front of people Field guide: the wedging table and the slab bench Protocol two: the finger question Field guide: the glaze room and the kiln room Protocol three: the bucket A pot has a body, and we named all of it Eleven sentences, said out loud, on purpose Real, or did we make it up? The worst ten, ranked None of this is our fault Four potters, four straight faces The one video to watch What actually happens here Questions people actually ask Related lessons, all real

So here is a field guide to the innocent words and motions that no grown adult gets through with a straight face. Fifty-four real terms with their real definitions, three protocols for saying the worst of them out loud, eleven sentences a professional said in this building last month, a labeled diagram of a pot, and the ten that stop a room, ranked. Nothing on this page is dirty. That is the entire problem.

This is the short version: the protocol, one of the three worked all the way through, the sentences, and the worst ten, ranked. The full field guide, the pot diagram and the part where I explain that none of this is our fault are in the comprehensive version.

ZeroWords on this page that mean anything other than exactly what they say
3Protocols for saying these things in a room and keeping the room
54Real terms in the field guide. Every one is in somebody’s textbook
10Ranked, worst last. That list is most of the short version

Fifty-four terms, three protocols, the pot diagram, the etymology, the game, the ranked ten and four videos.

A confession, up front

I did not want to write this page.

I argued about it. I said this studio has a whole library of lessons on things that will actually make somebody a better potter, and that this would be the one people send each other. I was told that was the point. So here we are.

Here is what changed my mind. I have watched hundreds of people walk into a pottery studio for the first time, and almost every one of them arrives braced. They are about to be bad at something in front of strangers, with their hands, while sitting on a stool that is too low. That is a genuinely uncomfortable thing to volunteer for.

And then somebody says score it and slip it and the whole room goes.

Four seconds. Everybody looks at everybody else. Somebody snorts. And for those four seconds not one person in that room is worried about their pot. I have never given a correction that did as much good as that.

So no, we are not fixing the words. There is nothing to fix. Every term on this page is the accurate one, most of them are older than the country, and the reason they land the way they do has nothing to do with pottery and everything to do with the fact that you and I are both twelve.

What is actually on this page

Fifty-four real terms with their real definitions. Three protocols for getting through the worst of them in front of a room. A diagram of a pot with every part named the way potters have named them for about three thousand years. A game where you guess which words we made up. And a ranked list, worst last.

The whole thing

The words are innocent. You are not. Neither am I. Say it faster and keep your hands on the clay.

Every term in a pottery studio is the accurate one, and most of them were named centuries ago by people in sheds who had no idea what they were doing to us. You will be told to pull a handle, open the clay, collar it in, score and slip it, give the bucket a good long stir, and get your weight over it and push down with your hips. All six of those are correct instructions and none of them can be reworded without making them worse. The protocol below is four rules that work. Below that is the same thing done at full length on the single hardest one, then the sentences, then the ranked ten. If you want the whole field guide, the diagram and the etymology, the comprehensive version is one tap up.

Start here

The Straight Face Protocol.

Four rules. I have been failing to use them since long before this studio existed, and they still work better than anything else I have tried.

The four rulesWorks everywhere
  1. 1Normal speed.Slowing down is a confession. The word does not get safer if you approach it carefully, it gets louder. Say it at exactly the pace of the words on either side of it and it passes through the room like traffic.
  2. 2Hands on the clay.This is the whole defense. A person with wet hands moving clay is demonstrating a technique. A person standing there with dry hands who has just said that out loud is a suspect. Get your hands in before your mouth starts.
  3. 3Never add anything.No if you know what I mean. No and I mean that technically. Nobody knew what you meant. They had a fifty-fifty chance and you resolved it for them, out loud, in front of witnesses.
  4. 4If somebody laughs, laugh.Then go back to the clay. The one thing that turns four seconds of giggling into an actual problem is a grown adult refusing to acknowledge that anything happened.
Rule four is the only one that matters. The other three are for people who think they are going to win.
Tick list, before you open your mouth0 of 5

Field guide, part one

The wheel and the trimming bench.

Eighteen terms. Every definition is the real one. The line at the bottom of each card is what the room does.

The wheelCenteringPressing a lump of clay against your hands until it runs true and stops wobbling. The first thing anybody learns and the thing most people are worst at for a year.Clean on its own. Ruined forever by the follow-up, which is always some version of how long it takes you to get there.
The wheelConing upSqueezing the clay upward into a tall cone with both hands, then pressing it back down flat. Twice, usually. It lines up the particles and finds the air.Fine the first time. The instruction to do it again is where the room goes.
The wheelOpeningPressing your thumbs down into the middle of the centered lump to make the inside of the pot. How deep you go decides the floor thickness.Survives on its own. Does not survive the next sentence, which is a question about how far down you went.
The wheelPulling up the wallsSqueezing the clay between a knuckle outside and a finger inside, and drawing upward so the wall gets taller and thinner. Three or four passes for a mug.There are four separate problems in that description and there is no version of it that has fewer.
HandlesPulling a handleWetting a cone of clay, gripping it between a thumb and two fingers, and dragging downward again and again until it stretches into a long even strip.The demonstration takes ninety seconds. Longest ninety seconds available to anybody who works here. There is a whole protocol for it below.
The wheelThrowing off the humpCentering one large mound and making several small pots off the top of it, cutting each one free without recentering in between. Fast, efficient, genuinely the best way to make eight cups.Somebody always repeats it back slowly, as three separate words, and then hears themselves do it.
The wheelThe humpThe mound. It is just the mound of clay. That is the entire definition.I have never once said this word in a full room and had nothing happen.
The wheelCollaring inWrapping both hands around the neck of a pot and squeezing gently while the wheel turns, to narrow the opening without thinning the wall.We know. There is no other word for it, and there is a whole lesson on this site named after it. Right here.
The wheelCompressing the rimPinching the top edge between wet fingers while the wheel turns, closing up the clay particles so the rim does not crack later.Every single word in that is a technical term. Say the whole sentence out loud once and see how you do.
EverywhereSlipClay and water mixed to about the thickness of heavy cream. Used as glue, as decoration, and as lubrication.One syllable. No defense. Comes up roughly forty times a night.
EverywhereSlurryThe sloppier, wetter version of the above. Mostly what collects in your splash pan while you throw.Somehow worse than slip, and nobody has ever been able to explain to me why.
The wheelKeeping it wetThe most important habit on the wheel. Dry clay grabs your skin, and a wall that grabs is a wall that tears or goes off center.The correct instruction is you have to keep it wet the whole time. There is no shorter correct instruction. I have looked.
TrimmingTrimmingCarving the excess clay off a leather-hard pot on the wheel to shape the base and set the final weight.Completely harmless. Included so the list has one place to rest.
TrimmingChuckA thrown or bisque form you set a pot into upside down, so you can trim the base without the rim taking any weight.Real. In every textbook. Has a smaller cousin, and the cousin is worse.
TrimmingChumThe chuck’s smaller cousin. Same job, less of it. Usually solid rather than hollow.Also real, and also a thing an instructor will ask you to go and fetch, out loud, in front of people. We have a lesson on both.
TrimmingTap centeringRunning the wheel and tapping the upside-down pot with one finger until it stops wobbling, instead of measuring it into place. Faster than every alternative.Nothing wrong with the words at all. It is the motion that gets you. There is a practice tool.
AnatomyThe footThe bottom of the pot. The part it stands on. Trimmed last and glazed never.Perfectly fine by itself. Wait until you see what the rest of the pot is called.
The wheelBat pinsTwo metal pins sticking up out of the wheel head. Your bat drops down onto them so it cannot spin off while you throw.You will be told to get your bat on the pins. There is no other way to say it and believe me somebody has tried.

Protocol one

How to demonstrate pulling a handle to four adults without making eye contact with any of them.

This is the hardest ninety seconds in the building, and it happens several times a week. Every step below is also correct technique, which is the part that makes it unfair.

Protocol oneSix steps · ninety seconds
  1. 1Announce it while you are still walking.Distance is your friend. A term delivered from six feet away and moving is half the term it would have been at the bench. By the time you arrive it is already old news.
  2. 2Wet hands first, every time.Wet hands are a costume. Wet hands say professional. Dry hands say a man who has walked over here specifically to say that. This is also real technique: a dry hand on a wet cone of clay tears it on the first pass.
  3. 3Pick your fixed point in advance.The far wall. The glaze shelf. Mud is excellent at this and has never once made it weird. What you do not do is look up mid-pull to see how everyone is holding together, because now you know, and now they know you know.
  4. 4Do not narrate the grip.Thumb on top, two fingers underneath, and pull is a complete instruction. Everything you were about to add after the word pull is not needed by anybody and will not survive the room.
  5. 5Finish it. All the way.The single worst thing available to you is stopping halfway to check how it is going. Nobody is going to answer that question. Also, a handle abandoned mid-pull is a lumpy handle, so the coward’s move is also the wrong move.
  6. 6Hang it to stiffen and walk away with no summary.There is no summary. There has never been a summary. A summary is a second run at the same words with none of the protection of doing something with your hands.
If you would like to watch a professional do all six of these correctly and at speed, Florian Gadsby is in the video band further down, and his face does not move once in thirty-four minutes. That is the level. None of us are there.

The actual technique, minus the panic, is in our handle lesson, which is a real lesson about handles and was not named for this page.

Field guide, part two

The wedging table and the slab bench.

Eighteen more. This section contains the single worst instruction in the building, and it is the correct instruction, and there is no alternative.

WedgingWedgingPushing clay against a table with the heels of your hands, over and over, to work the air out and line the particles up before you throw.The word itself is fine. The instruction that comes with it is the next card, and it is coming.
WedgingGetting your weight over itThe actual correct instruction for wedging. You cannot do it with your arms. It comes from the hips, and your body has to be above the clay, and you have to push down.This is the one. Whatever is happening in your head right now, an instructor said this out loud on Tuesday to four adults, and she was completely right.
WedgingRam’s headA wedging motion where you rock the clay side to side. Named for the shape the folds make, which genuinely does look like a ram.Innocent. Sits next to the others in the lineup and gets convicted anyway.
WedgingSpiral wedgingThe harder one. The clay turns under one hand while the other pushes, and it comes out looking like a shell.Fine on paper. Watch somebody demonstrate it and then try to describe what you saw.
WedgingStack and slamCutting the clay in half with a wire and throwing one half down onto the other, hard, over and over. Fast way to mix reclaim.The only technique in this building that sounds exactly as violent as it actually is.
ReclaimSlakingDropping bone dry clay into water and leaving it alone until it collapses into mush. The first step of reclaiming clay.Real word, real process, and nobody has ever said it without a small pause first.
ReclaimPuggingRunning clay through a pug mill, which mixes it, pulls the air out and pushes it back out as a smooth log ready to throw.The machine is called a pug mill. The verb is pugging. We did not do this. This was done to us.
Clay bodiesFat clay and short clayShort clay cracks when you bend it, because it has too little plasticity. Fat clay is over-plastic and slumps. Both are standard classifications. Both are in the clay bodies guide.You will hear a professional describe clay as fat, out loud, with a straight face, and you will not be ready for it.
JoiningScoring and slippingScratching both surfaces with a needle tool and painting slip between them before you press two pieces of clay together. The only join that holds.Said as score and slip. Fifty times a night. Every night. Forever.
Hand buildingSlabsFlat sheets of clay, rolled out with a pin or run through a slab roller.Clean. Enjoy it. It lasts one card.
Hand buildingSlab moldsForms you drape a slab over or press one into. Always written out in full on this website, in every caption and every label, never shortened.This page is the single best explanation of that rule we have. The short version sends people somewhere we do not go and never will. The lesson is here.
Hand buildingCoilsRopes of clay rolled out by hand or squeezed out of an extruder, stacked to build a wall.Safe. Until step two.
Hand buildingBlending coilsSmearing each coil down into the one below it with a thumb, inside and out, until the join disappears completely.And there is step two.
Hand buildingSprig moldsSmall forms for making little raised decorations that you then stick onto the outside of a piece.The verb is sprigging. It gets worse the longer you look at it, and I have looked at it for some time now.
ExtrudingThe wall extruderA steel tube bolted to the wall with a long lever arm. You load clay in the top and pull the arm to force it out through a shaped plate at the bottom.Every single noun in that sentence is the correct one. The lesson has photographs.
ExtrudingThe plungerThe part of the extruder that pushes the clay down the tube when you pull the arm.That is what it is called. That is what it does. There is a diagram in the manual and it is labeled.
ExtrudingThe dieThe shaped plate at the bottom of the extruder that decides what shape comes out. Round, square, hollow, handle-shaped.One syllable, and honestly the least of your problems in that corner of the room.
CarvingKurinukiA Japanese technique. You carve the entire pot out of one solid block of clay, hollowing the inside through the top. We teach it.Completely innocent in Japanese. Say it three times fast in English and report back.

Protocol two

How to ask a grown adult how many fingers they have inside a pot, which is a question you will genuinely need to ask.

It matters. Two fingers inside and one knuckle outside is a completely different wall thickness from a whole flat hand, and I cannot see through the pot to check.

Protocol twoFive steps · use step one
  1. 1Ask about the wall, not the hand.How thick is the wall down at the bottom gets you the exact same information and costs you nothing. This is step one because it is the answer, and the other four steps exist for the times you forget.
  2. 2If you must ask directly, lead with the number.Are you at two, or three? A sentence that opens with a numeral is a sentence about arithmetic. Nobody has ever blushed at arithmetic.
  3. 3Never say in there.In there has no defenders. In there has never had a good night. In the pot is four extra letters and it buys you the whole evening.
  4. 4Do not point.I am not going to explain this one.
  5. 5If the answer is “all of them,” move on.A flat hand inside means the wall is far too thick and the pot has stopped being the interesting thing in the conversation for everybody present. Hand them a rib. Talk about the rib. The rib is safe.
Step four is the only one I have personally ever gotten wrong, and it was in front of eleven people, and I think about it more than I think about most things.

Field guide, part three

The glaze room and the kiln room.

The last eighteen. Somewhere around 1890 a person sat down and named every single way a fired pot can go wrong, and cards six through eleven are what they came up with.

GlazingDippingLowering a bisque piece into a bucket of glaze, holding it under for a count, and lifting it out clean. Seven buckets here.Clean. The next one is not.
GlazingDouble dippingDipping a second time for a thicker coat, or dipping one part again to build a deliberate overlap where two glazes meet.Real technique. Real name. Everybody hesitates before they say it and everybody says it anyway.
GlazingGive it a good long stirThe most important instruction in the glaze room. A bucket that has settled is water on top and glaze on the bottom, and a piece dipped in it comes out looking like a rinse.There is a whole protocol for saying this out loud, directly below. It is the hardest sentence in the building.
GlazingWax resistPainting liquid wax onto a piece so glaze will not stick there. Mostly used on the bottom, sometimes for a pattern.Fine. Right up until somebody asks you to wax their foot for them.
GlazingDry footingWiping every trace of glaze off the bottom of a piece so it does not fuse itself permanently to a kiln shelf. Non-negotiable.It is the single most important habit in the glaze room and it is called that.
Glaze faultsCrawlingGlaze pulling away from the piece in the kiln and beading up, leaving bare patches of clay between islands of glaze.A glaze fault. They are all named like this. Stay with me.
Glaze faultsCrazingA fine web of cracks across the glaze surface, caused by the glaze and the clay shrinking at different rates as they cool.Also a fault. Also fine. We are building to something.
Glaze faultsShiveringGlaze flaking off edges and rims under compression. Sharp, and the reason we grind. The opposite problem to crazing.Still fine.
Glaze faultsBlisteringBubbles that rise through the glaze and burst at the top of the firing, leaving open craters behind.Getting there.
Glaze faultsBloatingBubbles inside the clay body itself, which puff the wall outward into a lump. Usually organic matter or trapped air.Almost.
Glaze faultsDuntingA crack that opens because the kiln cooled too fast through a critical temperature. It sounds like a ping and it happens hours after the firing looked finished.And there it is. Every one of those six is in our glaze problems lesson, alphabetized, with photographs.
FiringSoakingHolding the kiln at temperature instead of shutting it off the second it arrives, so the heat has time to even out through the load.Ours soaks twelve minutes at the top, which is what makes our glaze firing cone 5½ rather than a round number.
FiringThe bungThe plug that seals a peep hole in the side of a kiln. You pull it out to look in, and put it back to hold the heat.That is the actual word, in the actual manual, printed by the actual manufacturer, who chose it.
FiringThe peep holeThe small hole in the kiln wall you look through to check the cones while the kiln is running.It is also called the spy hole, which does not help anybody.
FiringThe damperThe vent control on a gas kiln, deciding how much air gets pulled through the chamber and therefore how the atmosphere behaves.Nearly innocent. It is on this list because it lives next door to the bung.
FiringStilts and spursLittle pointed props that hold a glazed piece up off the shelf so only three tiny points ever touch it.Somebody names these things. Somebody sat down and chose these.
FiringKiln furnitureThe shelves and posts you build the stack out of. Loading a kiln is mostly furniture.Sounds like a sofa. Is a slab of silicon carbide that weighs more than everything you put on it.
FiringThe coneA small triangular pyramid of clay that softens and bends at a known temperature, so you can see what the kiln actually did rather than what it claimed. Ours bend at cone 05 for a bisque and cone 5½ for a glaze.When it works, a grown adult walks out of the kiln room and announces to everybody that the cone went down. With relief. Out loud.

Protocol three

How to tell a room full of adults to give the bucket a good long stir.

This one cannot be avoided, cannot be shortened, and has to be said before every single glaze session. An unstirred bucket ruins the piece and the piece is usually somebody’s favorite one.

Protocol threeFive steps · step five is a warning
  1. 1Say mix instead.It is slightly less accurate and dramatically shorter. Ninety percent of the time it does the job and nobody looks at anybody.
  2. 2If you say the long one, say it as one word.Momentum is everything. A sentence delivered as a single unbroken sound is a sentence nobody has time to take apart.
  3. 3Attach a number to it.Ninety seconds turns an instruction into a specification. Specifications are boring. Boring is the entire goal here, and ninety seconds also happens to be about right.
  4. 4Point at the bucket while you say it.A pointed-at object becomes a technical object. This is the one situation where pointing helps, and it is the exact opposite of protocol two, and I do not make the rules.
  5. 5Do not add “really get right down to the bottom.”It is correct. It is necessary. The heavy material genuinely does sit on the bottom of the bucket and a stir that does not reach it has done nothing at all. It is also the end of your class, and everyone will remember it, and one of them will bring it up at the holiday party.
I have said step five out loud. Twice. Both times on purpose, because it was the correct instruction, and both times I stand by it and would do it again, and both times the class was over.

The part that is not an accident

A pot has a body, and potters named every part of it on purpose.

Everything else on this page is a coincidence of English. This one is not. These words were chosen, deliberately, by people who were quite consciously making bodies out of clay.

1 2 3 4 5 6
  1. 1The lipThe very top edge. On a mug it is the only part of the pot that has to be good at its job every single morning.
  2. 2The neckWhere the form narrows above the shoulder. Wide neck, easy to reach into. Narrow neck, harder to make and harder to glaze.
  3. 3The shoulderWhere the pot stops going outward and starts going up. The hardest curve on the whole form to get right.
  4. 4The bellyThe widest part, where all the volume lives. A pot with no belly reads as a tube.
  5. 5The waistWhere the form draws back in on the way down to the base.
  6. 6The footWhat it stands on. Trimmed last, glazed never, and the first thing another potter will pick the pot up to look at.

And there is more of it

A lidded form also has a gallery, which is the little inner ledge the lid sits down on. A pouring form has a throat. Some old texts give a jar a hip. Every one of those words is standard, every one of them is in the books, and not one of them is a joke. Greek potters were describing amphorae this way about three thousand years ago. They were making bodies and they said so.

So half of this page is an accident of English and the other half is a group of humans, across every continent, independently deciding that the thing they had just made looked like a person.

No commentary required

Eleven sentences said out loud in this building last month.

Seven sentences said out loud in this building last month.

By professionals. To adults. On purpose. Every one of them is an instruction, every one of them is correct, and not one of them can be reworded without becoming a worse instruction.

  1. 1“You have to keep it wet the whole time or it will tear.”
  2. 2“Two fingers inside, one outside, and squeeze.”
  3. 3“Do not be scared to really get in there.”
  4. 4“Just let it come up on its own. If you force it, it will collapse.”
  5. 5“Get your weight over it and push down with your hips.”
  6. 6“How many fingers do you have in there?”
  7. 7“Score it, slip it, and hold it there until it grabs.”
  8. 8“Slow down. You are going way too fast for how wet that is.”
  9. 9“Is it hard yet? Give it another hour and check it again.”
  10. 10“You are gripping way too tight. Loosen up and it will go.”
  11. 11“It is too dry. Put more slip on it and work it in.”

That is the whole page, really. I could stop here.

A short game

Real pottery term, or did we make it up?

Twelve words. Nine of them are in a ceramics textbook right now. Three of them we invented at this desk this afternoon. Have a guess, then tap to find out, and notice how hard it is, and notice why.

If you got fewer than nine, that is not a failure of your general knowledge. It is the point. There is no way to tell these apart from the outside, because the real ones were named by people who were not thinking about you.

The rankings

The worst ten, ranked by how long the room goes quiet.

The worst ten, ranked. Worst last.

Fifty-four candidates, one list. Counting down, so the last one is the champion.

Counting down. Every one of these is a real instruction that gets said here weekly.

10The bungLow placement only because you have to be near a kiln to hear it. Devastating when you are.
9ChumGets a boost from always arriving as a request. Nobody ever mentions a chum. They ask you to go and get one.
8Double dippingEverybody hears it. Nobody says anything. The silence is short but it is total.
7Score it and slip itWould rank higher if it were not said fifty times a night. Volume has worn a groove in it. The first time still lands.
6Collaring inCarried entirely by the fact that both hands are demonstrably wrapped around something while it is said.
5Opening the claySurvivable alone. Fatal in combination with the question that always follows about how far down you went.
4Give it a good long stirLong, slow, unavoidable, and it comes with an optional extra clause that ends careers. Protocol three exists for this one alone.
3Get your weight over it and push down with your hipsThe only entry where the correct technique also physically requires hips. There is no wording around it. We have all tried.
2Pulling a handleNinety seconds of sustained, silent, two-fingered demonstration in front of an audience. Nothing else on the list has a duration.
1Throwing off the humpUndefeated. Three words, each one clean, and the arrangement is a catastrophe. It is also the fastest way to make eight cups, so we say it constantly, and it has never once gotten easier.

In our defense

None of this is our fault, and I can prove it.

Start with the biggest one. Throwing. The pot is not thrown anywhere. Nothing is launched. Nobody has ever thrown a pot in the sense you are picturing, and every beginner asks about it in week one.

The word comes from Old English, thrawan, which meant to twist or to turn. It is the same root that gives us a thread with a twist in it. The wheel turns, the clay twists, and the word simply sat there for a thousand years while the rest of English wandered off and gave throw a completely different job. We inherited the wreckage.

Almost everything else is workshop English, which is worse than academic English because nobody was watching. Somebody in a shed looked at a thing, named it after what it looked like or what it did, and told an apprentice. That apprentice told an apprentice. Repeat for about nine hundred years without one single person in that chain pausing to ask how any of it would sound in a mixed room full of adults in 2026.

That is how you get a plug called a bung and a fault called dunting and a small solid lump called a chum. Nobody was being funny. Being funny would have required imagining you.

And then there is the body vocabulary, which is the opposite. The lip, the neck, the shoulder, the belly, the waist, the foot. Those were not accidents and they were not workshop shorthand. Greek potters, Korean potters, English potters, all of them separately arrived at the same idea, which is that the object in front of them had a shape like a person and the fastest way to talk about it was to say so.

So the honest split is this

About half this page is an accident of one language drifting for a millennium. The other half is thousands of years of people all over the world deciding, independently and on purpose, that a pot is a body. Only one of those halves is funny, and it is not the one you would guess.

Watch it happen

Four potters. Four straight faces. Zero awareness.

One video, fifty-seven seconds, and it is the whole page.

None of these people work here or know we exist. The first one is a national broadcaster putting the entire thesis of this page in a headline, and the other three are professionals saying every term on this list out loud without a flicker. Still frames load while you read; the player and its cookies wait until you press play.

A national broadcaster put the whole thesis of this page in a headline. The other three videos are in the comprehensive version.

Start here: somebody else said itSeth Rogen shows how to throw a ‘cup off the hump’ (it’s not as dirty as it sounds)CBC
Fifty-seven seconds. A broadcaster ran the disclaimer in the headline because they knew exactly what was going to happen, and it happened anyway. If you only watch one thing on this page, this is the one. Watch on YouTube
Protocol one, executed perfectlyThe Ultimate Pottery Handle Pulling Guide — A Beginner’s GuideFlorian Gadsby
Thirty-four minutes of a man saying the words and doing the motion, and his face does not move once. Watch it for the technique, which is genuinely the best handle instruction on the internet. Then watch it again for the composure. Watch on YouTube
The number one entry, in fullHow to Throw Off the Hump!Pottery to the People
Seventeen minutes. The title has an exclamation point in it. She says the phrase, by my count, somewhere north of thirty times, and by minute four it has stopped being anything at all, which is exactly what happens to all of us eventually. Watch on YouTube
The hips instruction, demonstratedHow to Spiral Wedge ClayFlorian Gadsby
Number three on the ranked list, done properly. Watch where his shoulders are relative to the clay, because that is the whole instruction, and it is the reason there is no polite way to give it. Watch on YouTube

How it works here

What actually happens in this building, honestly.

This page is written for potters anywhere. Here is where our studio stands on it, including the part that is not funny.

We are not changing the words

Every term on this page is the accurate one. If we invented polite substitutes you would learn the wrong vocabulary, and then be lost in every other studio, every book and every video you ever open. That is a real cost and it buys nothing.

Your instructor is not doing it on purpose

By the four hundredth time somebody says score and slip it has stopped being a phrase and become a noise. Give them a year and it will happen to you too. That is not a warning, it is a promise.

Laughing is completely fine

Nobody is in trouble. Nobody is going to be looked at. The only actual rule is that you laugh and then go back to your pot, because a handle sitting too long is a handle you have to pull again.

There is a line, and it is a clear one

Finding a word funny is not the same as using a word to make somebody uncomfortable on purpose. The first one is most of this page. The second one is a completely different thing, we can tell the difference, and it gets handled quietly and immediately.

Younger members are here too

Kids and teenagers are in this studio most nights. They find exactly the same words funny that you do, they recover from it faster than you do, and none of the terminology is a problem for any of them. It never has been.

Skill level

There is not one. This is an elective and it teaches you nothing you can put in a kiln. If you want the lesson that made you click, every term on this page links out to a real one, and the related lessons at the bottom are all genuine.

Questions people actually ask

Mostly asked quietly, at the end of class.

Am I allowed to laugh?

Yes. Everybody does. The instructor standing in front of you laughed at the same word once and now says it forty times a night without hearing it, and they remember what the first week was like.

Is my instructor saying these things on purpose?

Almost never. Repetition kills a word completely. After a few hundred times, score and slip stops being a phrase and turns into a single sound that means put glue on it. Occasionally somebody has a moment of clarity mid-sentence, and you can see it land on their face, and that is worth watching for.

Did you make any of these terms up?

Three, in the game above, and every one of them is labeled as ours the moment you tap it. Everything in the three field guide sections is a real term with its real definition, and most of them are older than the United States.

Why is it called throwing if you do not throw anything?

Old English, thrawan, meaning to twist or to turn. The wheel turns and the clay twists. The word kept its original job while the rest of English gave throw a new one, and now every beginner asks this in week one.

My kid is in a class. Is any of this a problem?

No. Younger members are in this studio most nights and the vocabulary has never once been an issue. They think it is funny, exactly the way you do, and then they get back to their pot considerably faster than the adults manage to.

What is genuinely the worst one?

The ranked list above says throwing off the hump, and by room reaction that is correct. My personal vote goes to the wedging instruction, because it is the only entry where the accurate technique also physically requires you to say the word hips.

Can a person get through a whole class without laughing?

Some can. I have never met the same one twice.

Is there a polite version of any of this?

Not one that survives contact with the work. Every substitute we have ever tried is either longer, less accurate, or teaches somebody the wrong thing. The correct instruction is the correct instruction, and the protocols on this page are the honest answer instead.

Related lessons

Six real lessons. We did not name any of them for this page.

Three real lessons. We did not name them for this page.

Each of these existed before this page did, was written by somebody trying to be helpful, and is genuinely about the thing in the title.

Trimming, handles and dryingHow to Pull Handles for Mugs and PotteryNumber two on the list, taught properly, at length, with no protocol required. The pottery wheelHow to Throw Off the HumpThe undefeated champion, and one of the most useful skills on the wheel. TrimmingMaking and Using Chucks and ChumsBoth of them. In the title. On a family website. Hand buildingHow to Score and Slip Pottery JoinsThe most repeated instruction in the building, done right so your joins hold. GlazingGlaze Problems, Causes and FixesCrawling, crazing, shivering, blistering, bloating and dunting, with photographs. ElectivesThe Many Myths of PotteryThe other elective that is mostly about what people believe rather than what is true.
Dan Pearce, author, artist and founder of The Clay Hole, at work on pottery in the studio in Draper, Utah
Wrote this under protest

About the reluctant author

Dan Pearce

Founder of The Clay Hole · Draper, Utah · Would like it on the record that he suggested a different page

Dan Pearce is an author, artist, and the founder of The Clay Hole in Draper, Utah. He spent a decade as one of the most-read bloggers in the world, has published six books, built an audience of more than three million people, and put every dollar of Dan Pearce Ceramics into building a ten thousand square foot studio from nothing. He would like the record to show that not one minute of any of that was preparation for spending a Tuesday afternoon typing the word bung eleven times.

He argued against this page. He pointed out that this studio has a whole library of lessons on things that will genuinely make somebody a better potter, and that this would be the one people send each other at eleven at night. He was told that was the point. He wrote it anyway, and then he went back and alphabetized the glaze faults, which is how you know he made his peace with it.

He was right about the sending, by the way. He is fine. Please stop forwarding him the wedging one.

The full story, wins and faceplants included →

One last thing, and I mean it

A pottery studio is one of the last rooms where adults are bad at something together, on purpose, in front of witnesses.

That is a hard thing to sign up for. People arrive braced for it. And then somebody says score it and slip it and the entire room breaks, and for about four seconds not one person in there is thinking about how their pot looks compared to everybody else’s.

I have watched those four seconds do more for a nervous beginner than any correction I have ever given one. So the vocabulary stays exactly as it is, and I will keep saying all of it out loud, badly, for the rest of my life.

People arrive braced. Then somebody says score it and slip it, the room breaks, and for four seconds nobody is worried about their pot. That is worth more than any correction I have ever given. The field guide, the diagram and the etymology are in the comprehensive version at the top.

Now go pull a handle.

How to Pull Handles How to Throw Off the Hump

Written for potters everywhere. Every term on this page is real and every definition is the correct one, which remains the entire problem.