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The Clay Hole University · Project Guides

Making Smokeware and Water VesselsPrintable pottery guide

The whole piece, in the order it can go wrong: the bare bowl, the airway that shrinks, the chamber that has to hold water, and the design decision that settles whether you can ever clean it.

$10.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Advanced
  • 18 printable pages
  • 2 video picks
  • 8-question quiz + answer key

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

What is the Making Smokeware and Water Vessels printable guide?

It is the lesson on paper: why the bowl is left bare and which clays and glazes are ruled out, how to build an airway wide enough to survive shrinkage, three ways to build the piece and how to join it, what a water chamber needs and why a glass downstem in a socket beats a clay one, and why cleaning decides the design. Six troubleshooting cards say what caused each failure, and a log page records how wide the airway was wet and after bisque. Built to be printed, written in and kept on the bench.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Making Smokeware and Water Vessels” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 18printable pages, US Letter
  • 8quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 2hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 21glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For a pot with a job

A popular thing to make, and an easy thing to make badly

Shaping the piece is the easy half. The trouble starts afterwards, in places you cannot see once it is fired: a channel that felt generous in soft clay and came out too tight, a chamber that took its own wall with it in the kiln, a socket that will not take the part it was made for, an inside that no brush can reach.

Almost every one of those was decided at the bench, days before it showed. Which glaze goes near the mouth, how wide the airway is while the clay is wet, where the steam gets out, whether a brush can reach every surface. None of it is hard once somebody has written it down in the order it matters.

That is what the guide is for. It puts the decisions in the order you meet them, and it puts a page beside them for writing down the numbers you will want next time.

Look inside

Real pages, for a bench with a bucket beside it

These are actual pages from the guide, shown here with the sample watermark.

  • Page 3 of the “Making Smokeware and Water Vessels” printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginSix boxes on one page: what you will learn, what to have on the bench, what is worth knowing, the common pitfalls, what success looks like and how to practice. Read it before you start and again before the bisque.
  • Page 7 of the “Making Smokeware and Water Vessels” printable guide: three ways to build it, shown with the sample watermark
    Three ways to build itSolid then hollowed, built hollow from the start, or thrown parts assembled, and the three things that apply to every route: wall thickness, joining at matching dryness and drying slowly.
  • Page 9 of the “Making Smokeware and Water Vessels” printable guide: six ways it goes wrong, shown with the sample watermark
    Six ways it goes wrongA blocked airway, a piece that burst in the bisque, a cracked seam, a chamber that seeps, a cracked bowl and a design you cannot clean. Find the symptom, read the cause. Most were decided at the bench long before they showed.
  • Page 12 of the “Making Smokeware and Water Vessels” printable guide: every piece, and how it came out, shown with the sample watermark
    Every piece, and how it came outA log to write in: the build route, how wide the airway was wet, how wide it was after bisque, and what the overnight water test said. The second piece starts from a number instead of a memory.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

You will be reading it with clay on your hands

A lot of this is checking: a brush through a channel, water overnight, a real part in a real socket. Paper suits a bench.

  • It holds still

    A page stays where you left it while your hands are wet or covered in clay. It does not go dark, and it does not need slip wiped off a screen.

  • Checks you can write down

    The airway is checked at bone dry and again after bisque, and the chamber is tested with water overnight. The guide has a page to record what each one said, next to how wide you built it.

  • The whole job, on one page

    One page covers the bowl, the airway, the chamber, the wash, what to do when it goes wrong and what to ask first. It is the page to pin above the bench.

  • A log that stays yours

    The log is set up for eight pieces. Print another copy when it fills, and the numbers you wrote down for the first one are still there for the ninth.

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 kiln explosion, put right

    The lesson blamed trapped air for pieces bursting in the kiln. Our own myths lesson shows it is water turning to steam, so the guide gives that reason and keeps the rule that every enclosed volume needs an opening.

  • Two glaze rules, tightened

    The guide no longer says studio glazes are free of lead and cadmium, because a bright red or orange can carry cadmium locked in a stain with a heat limit. Anything that goes near the mouth is looked up in the Food Safe Lookup first.

  • Dust, and the kiln cookie

    Fitting a socket after the kiln is done wet and never dry, in an N95 or better, and the piece sits on a kiln cookie or glaze catcher for the glaze firing.

  • Every video, read

    We read the description and chapter list of each video against the note beside it. One is about vitrification rather than smokeware, and its note says so.

  • A quiz that explains itself

    Eight questions, and an answer key that gives the reason behind every answer rather than only the letter.

  • Codes that keep working

    Every link is a short Clay Hole address. If a video moves, we repoint the address and your printed copy still goes to the right place.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “Making Smokeware and Water Vessels” lesson, and that lesson is not going anywhere.

I like this project for a reason that has nothing to do with what the finished piece is. It takes every rule you have picked up at the wheel or the table and gives each one a job.

The first is to ask before you begin. A shared studio has other people in it, and what gets made and fired there is the studio’s decision, so have that conversation while the clay is still in the bag.

The second is to test what you make. A brush through the channel, water overnight in the chamber, and the real parts in the real sockets, before you trust any of it.

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, with workbook pages, a glossary and a quiz with a worked answer key. Each one keeps its number for good, so a guide you buy today is the same guide in the same place next year.

Put any five printable guides in your cart and the cheapest one is on us. Put in nine and the two cheapest are on us. It happens automatically at checkout, no code to remember.

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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 teaching is the same, and the free lesson is not going anywhere. The guide is that teaching rebuilt for paper: a learning dashboard at the front, a log to write in, a one page summary, a glossary and a quiz with an answer key that explains every answer, plus the corrections we made along the way, which are on the free lesson too.
Do I need a wheel?
No. The guide covers building the piece solid then hollowed, built hollow from the start, or from thrown parts, so hand building works as well as the wheel.
Does it say what my studio will fire?
No, and it does not pretend to. The first page says to ask the staff at your studio before you begin, because what gets made and fired in a shared studio is the studio’s decision. It is a technical guide to making, and it is not legal advice.
Is this too early for me?
It is marked Advanced. Shaping the piece is ordinary hollow form work; what makes it advanced is everything that can go wrong once it is finished, in the kiln, in the socket and in the wash. If you have made a closed or joined form before, you have the hands for it.
Do I need a fancy printer?
No. It is set for an ordinary home or office printer on regular US Letter paper, with nothing important near the edges, so normal printer margins cut nothing off.
Does it print in black and white?
Yes. It is designed to stay readable in grayscale, and the pages you will actually use at the bench, the one page summary and the log, were checked that way on purpose.
Can I print just part of it?
Yes, and most people do. The one page summary and the log are the two worth having at the bench. They are numbered pages like any other, so you can print those and leave the rest on a screen.
Can I read it on a screen instead?
Yes. It is an ordinary PDF and it reads fine on a tablet or a phone. The log is the page that wants paper, because you write on it.
Do I have to be at a studio to use it?
No. Where the guide says something that is true of The Clay Hole, our firing cones for example, it says so and names the studio, so a reader working anywhere else knows which parts are a rule of the craft and which are ours.
How does delivery work?
It is a digital download. The link arrives by email and on the order confirmation page right after checkout, so you can have it printed and on the bench the same evening.
What happens if the guide is updated?
Every edition carries its version number on the last page. When we correct or improve one, the new edition replaces the old one in the shop, and we can send the updated link to anybody who already bought it.
Can I share it?
It is licensed for your own use. Print as many copies for yourself as you like, on as many of your own devices as you like. Please do not pass the file on, upload it or use it with a class or a group without asking us first.

Write down the airway, then check it with a brush

The shape is the fun part and it is not the hard part. The guide is the rest: the bare bowl, the wide channel, the opening for the steam, the socket tested with the real part, and a design you can reach into with a brush. Do those and the piece still works next year. Skip one and you find out in the kiln, which is why this one is worth reading before you build rather than after.

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