The Clay Hole University
For those who are serious about clay, we’ve created what we hope is the ultimate collection of pottery lessons and resources, all in one place.
Every lesson at The Clay Hole University comes in two versions: Comprehensive or Nutshell. The only question is how deep down the rabbit hole you want to go.
Dan Pearce founded The Clay Hole, and he wanted all of it open to everybody rather than walled off for members. People have been making pots shoulder to shoulder for tens of thousands of years, showing each other what works. That is a long tradition we’d love to keep going. Browse what you like. Dive in where it interests you. Join us if you’re here in Utah. We can’t wait to see what you make…
- 166 lessons written and live right now
- 14 pottery areas, ordered start to finish
- 1,213 quiz questions to test yourself on
The course catalog
Pick a pottery area, or search the whole thing.
Dan’s thoughts sit at the top. After those, the pottery areas run in the order a piece does, and inside each area the lessons run in the order you learn them. That is why tap centering sits with trimming rather than with throwing.
You have studied 0 of the 166 finished guides. Tick them off as you go and this page will remember.
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Search results
Results
The whole catalog is still below this, and every match is ringed where it lives.
Thoughts from Dan, Founder of The Clay Hole
No technique in any of these. Dan wrote them himself, about why this place exists, why the whole catalog is free to everyone, and what one night a week at a wheel is actually worth.
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Why I Built This and Gave It Away
Dan on what this catalog cost to build, why it is free to everyone whether they are members here or not, and the handful of things he would tell anyone about getting the most out of it.
Coming soon -
Let Yourself Be Bad at Something Again
Being new at something is the part most adults quietly avoid. Dan on letting yourself be bad at a thing, enjoying it anyway, and why that turns out to matter more than getting good at it.
Coming soon -
You Have More Time Than You Think
Open your screen time, then decide whether those hours are worth trading. Dan on why the people most certain they cannot fit a night in end up planning the week around it.
Coming soon -
Making Friends as an Adult Is Brutal
Families spread out, friend groups thin, and everyone works more. Dan on third spaces, why they keep disappearing, and why that is the reason this studio exists at all.
Coming soon -
ADHD, Hyperfocus, and Never Running Out
Dan on why a craft with this many directions is the first one he has never felt guilty about drifting through. When one thing stops holding his attention, five more are already waiting.
Coming soon
Foundations
Start here. What actually happens between a bag of clay and a finished piece, how to read the state your clay is in, and which of the things potters repeat to each other are true.
Preparing Your Clay
Wedging is the step people skip and then quietly regret four weeks later, standing over a cracked piece. The two techniques worth knowing, and what to do with the scraps once you have them.
The Pottery Wheel
The core skills, in the order you learn them. Nobody gets these on the first night, and the guides say so plainly rather than pretending otherwise.
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What to Check When Throwing Goes Wrong
The clay jerking you around, the pot lifting off the bat, the cylinder quietly turning into a bowl. A short checklist for each one, so you can find the cause instead of guessing at it.
Coming soonSkill level: Beginner
Advanced Throwing
Once a cylinder holds up on its own, this is where the wheel gets interesting.
Hand Building
No wheel required, and plenty of people never use one. Pinch, coil and slab work, plus our slab rollers and the 150+ slab molds on the shelves.
Hand Building – Project Guides
Whole objects rather than single techniques, in roughly the order they get hard. Each one is a build from first slab to finished piece, with the parts that catch people out written down.
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Footed Serving Bowls
Lifting a wide bowl off the table, and what a foot does to how it dries.
Open the lesson →GuideSkill level: Intermediate -
Butter Dishes with a Domed Lid
Two pieces that have to fit each other after both of them shrink.
Open the lesson →GuideSkill level: Intermediate -
Planters with an Attached Drip Tray
One piece instead of two, which sounds easier and is the opposite.
Open the lesson →GuideSkill level: Intermediate -
20 Easy Projects Beginners Can Hand-Build
Twenty small projects that need no wheel and no experience, each one you can finish in a session. Pick one, make it, pick the next.
Coming soonSkill level: Beginner
Trimming, Handles and Drying
Leather-hard work. This is where a decent pot becomes a good one, and where an impatient week turns into a crack you cannot fix.
Surface and Decoration
Everything you do to a surface before the glaze goes on. Carving, inlay, texture and resists, plus underglaze and engobes, which are the two products people mix up constantly.
Glazing
650+ brush-on glazes, seven dipping buckets, and more ways to ruin a good pot at the last step than at any other point in the process. Start with the rules.
Firing and Fixing
What happens in the kiln, what to do when a piece comes out attached to something it should not be attached to, and how to put one back together when it breaks. Bisque goes to cone 05 and glaze fires to cone 5½.
Other Ways to Find, Fire, and Form
Everything that happens away from a members' wheel, from digging your own clay out of a hillside to firing in a pit. Some of it we run as a workshop here, the rest needs a trip somewhere else, and all of it is worth knowing about. We do not slip cast and never will.
Selling Your Work
What happens after the kiln, in the order it tends to happen. Take a decent photograph, work out what a pot costs you, then decide where and how to sell it.
Electives
Nothing here belongs to a single stage of the process, because all of it belongs to every stage. When a plan helps and when it gets in the way, finding your own work and the feelings that get in its way, how potters mess up their own pots, where the craft grew up, and what running a building full of potters teaches you.
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Everything in a Pottery Studio That Sounds Wrong
Wedging, pulling handles, throwing off the hump, slip, bats, scoring. A field guide to the innocent words and motions that no grown adult gets through with a straight face.
Coming soon
Graduation Day
The four certifications. Each one gates equipment or a process, each has a quiz and an agreement at the end, and each one ends with a card. Take them when you need them rather than all at once.
Something missing?
Tell us what else you’d like to see here.
This library keeps growing, and the best ideas for it have always come from members getting stuck on something at the wheel. If there is a technique, a form or a problem you keep running into and it is not here yet, say so and it goes on the list.
Bisque fires to cone 05 and glaze fires to cone 5½ here, so any temperature written into these lessons is ours. If you are reading from another studio, check your own numbers before you copy anything.