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The Clay Hole University · Project Guides

Hand-Built Footed Serving BowlsPrintable pottery guide

Three ways to build the bowl, five kinds of foot, and the one rule that decides whether the join survives the kiln, laid out for two evenings at a table with no wheel in sight.

$10.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Intermediate
  • 29 printable pages
  • 9 video picks
  • 7-question quiz + answer key

Flip through the free sample
  • Instant download
  • Prints on any home printer
  • The full lesson stays free online
The printable, at a glance

What is the Hand-Built Footed Serving Bowls printable guide?

It is the whole two evening job on paper: pinch, coil or drape the bowl, let it come to leather hard, then put it up on a coil ring, a slab ring, a pedestal, three little pads or a foot carved out of the base. The part everybody gets wrong is the join, and the guide gives it eight steps, a fault index and the arithmetic for how much bigger to build so the fired bowl is the size you meant.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Hand-Built Footed Serving Bowls” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 29printable pages, US Letter
  • 7quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 9hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 16glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
A quarter inch of clay holds up the whole thing

The bowl is the easy evening

Anybody can make a wide bowl by hand. Pinch it, coil it, or press a slab into a mold and it comes out looking like something. What turns it into a serving piece is the foot, and a foot is a ring of contact maybe a quarter inch wide carrying everything above it.

That ring is where almost every footed bowl fails, and it fails for one reason: the bowl and the foot were at different moisture when they met. The drier one had already done some of its shrinking, the wetter one had not, and the join opened. Usually inside the kiln, where you find out a week later.

So the skill is not in your hands, it is in the waiting. Which is exactly the kind of thing a printed page is good at holding while you go and do something else for twenty minutes.

Look inside

Real pages, for a table with clay on it

These are actual pages from the guide, shown here with the sample watermark. The full guide has none.

  • Page 3 of the “Hand-Built Footed Serving Bowls” printable guide: what you will learn, and what goes wrong, shown with the sample watermark
    What you will learn, and what goes wrongThe whole guide in one spread before you start: what to have ready, the eight common pitfalls, and what a finished one actually looks like.
  • Page 5 of the “Hand-Built Footed Serving Bowls” printable guide: what a foot actually is, shown with the sample watermark
    What a foot actually isThe cross-section drawn to scale, with its seven parts named: the rim, the wall, the floor, the join, the ring, the contact edge and the hollow underneath.
  • Page 11 of the “Hand-Built Footed Serving Bowls” printable guide: the numbers that work, shown with the sample watermark
    The numbers that workFoot width against rim width, ring height, pedestal height, wall thickness and where the ring sits, plus the two second tip test that beats measuring.
  • Page 19 of the “Hand-Built Footed Serving Bowls” printable guide: the bowl log, shown with the sample watermark
    The bowl logOne row per bowl. What you built it from, how wide it was wet, and whether the two pieces felt the same when you scored them.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

The bowl and the foot are made on different days

Nothing here happens in one sitting. You build the bowl one evening, it firms up on a shelf, and the foot goes on the next class. A page carries the plan across that gap in a way a browser tab does not.

  • It waits for you

    No timeout, no lock screen, no scrolling back to find the step you were on with a wet thumb. It is still open at step six when you come back from washing your hands.

  • Two lists, one per evening

    Night one is the bowl, night two is the foot. Print them, tick them, and print them again for the next bowl.

  • The arithmetic is already done

    Six rim widths worked out: build it this wide wet, make the foot this wide, the height your shelf has to swallow and roughly what the glaze firing costs.

  • It survives the table

    Slip, slurry, a damp sponge and somebody else’s elbow. A printed page you can replace for nothing beats a phone you have to keep wiping.

How this one is built

Rebuilt for paper, not printed from a web page

Every guide in the series is set from scratch for print. Here is what that meant for this one.

  • The calculator, as a table

    The lesson’s shrinkage and shelf tool runs in a browser and cannot print. Its arithmetic is worked out here across six finished rim widths, with the wet size, the foot width, the height, the shelf it fits and the firing cost in every row.

  • All three routes, and all five feet

    Pinch, coil and slab mold side by side with what each one is bad at, then the coil ring, the slab ring, the pedestal, three feet and the carved foot, all on one spread instead of behind a tab.

  • The join, in eight steps

    Match the moisture, score deeply, slip from the same body, press and hold, blend, fillet, compress, cover. The one page that decides whether the piece survives the kiln.

  • Nine faults, each with its cause

    Every way a footed bowl goes wrong, what actually caused it, whether the piece in your hands can be saved, and what to change next time.

  • A bowl log and a bench card

    One row per bowl for what you felt when you scored it and what came out of the kiln, and a single page holding the numbers, the join order, the drying rules and the fault index.

  • A quiz, an answer key and a glossary

    The same questions as the lesson, with the reasoning written out behind every answer, and the words that get said around the tables set down in plain English.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “Hand-Built Footed Serving Bowls” lesson at The Clay Hole University. No paywall, no sign-up, no trial. This is the same teaching set for paper, so you can take it to the table.

I can stand at the hand building tables and tell you which bowls are coming back out of the kiln in one piece, and it has almost nothing to do with how good the bowl is.

Clay keeps shrinking right through the drying and right through the firing. Put a damp ring under a base that has already done most of its shrinking and something has to give, and it is always the join.

Feet do not have to be beautiful. A slightly wonky ring on a bowl somebody serves out of every Sunday is worth more than a perfect one on a shelf.

Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole
The series

Build a little pottery library

Every printable guide in The Clay Hole University series takes one free lesson and rebuilds it for paper: the teaching in the order you do it, the numbers worked out, the things that go wrong with what to do about each one, workbook pages to fill in, and a quiz with the reasoning behind every answer. This one is number 08.08, in the project guides, and its number never changes.

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Sits next to

Three lessons that pick up where this one leaves off

Each one is free to read online, and the codes in the guide take you straight there.

Questions

Good to know

How is this different from the free lesson?
The lesson is the same teaching and it stays free. This is that teaching rebuilt for paper: the shrinkage and firing calculator worked out as a printed table, all three routes and all five feet laid out at once instead of one at a time, the join in eight steps, two tick lists for the two evenings, a bowl log you fill in, a bench card, a glossary and the quiz with an answer key. It is for the table, not the sofa.
Do I need a wheel?
No, and that is the point of it. A trimmed foot ring is a wheel technique; an attached foot ring is not, and an attached one is arguably stronger because you are adding clay rather than cutting it away. Every method in the guide is done standing at a table.
Is this too advanced for me?
It is set at intermediate, and that is about patience rather than skill. Every move in it is a beginner move. What makes it intermediate is that the bowl and the foot are made on different days, so you have to read moisture in two pieces of clay and match them before you score anything.
Which route should I start with?
A slab draped into a mold, if you want something you are proud of on the first night, and a coil foot ring on top of it. The guide says so plainly and then gives you the other two routes and the other four feet, because the third bowl is usually the one where you want to try something else.
Will it print properly on my printer?
Yes. It is set for US Letter with margins any home printer can manage, and it is built to read in one colour as well as in colour. Print it single sided so you can mark the lists up, or double sided if you want it thinner.
Does it work in black and white?
It does. The cross-section, the tables and the fault list all read from the drawing and the layout rather than from colour, and nothing in it depends on telling one shade from another.
Can I just read it on a screen?
You can, and the links and codes in it all work. But the reason it exists is the gap between two classes: a bowl firming up on a shelf, a coil under plastic, and a decision about whether they feel the same. That is the moment a printed page beats a phone.
Can I print only part of it?
Yes, and most people do. The two working lists print as a pair, the bench card prints on its own, and the bowl log is meant to be printed again for every new batch.
How does delivery work?
It is a digital download. The link arrives by email and on the order confirmation page as soon as the order goes through, and the file is yours to keep and print as often as you like.
What happens if the guide is updated?
Every edition carries its version number on the last page, and updates are free to anyone who has bought it. If a correction matters, the new file goes out to existing buyers.
Can I share it or use it with a class?
It is licensed to you for your own use. Print it as many times as you like for yourself. Sharing the file, copying it for other people, uploading it, or using it with a class, a studio, a school or a group needs permission first, and we are easy to ask.

Make three. The third one is the one you give away

Build the bowl, let it wait, and do not score a single line until the two pieces feel the same kind of damp. Download it, print the two lists and the bowl log, and keep them on the table across both evenings.

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