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The Clay Hole University · Project Guides

Miniature Pottery: Thrown and BuiltPrintable pottery guide

The clay shrank. Your fingertip, the water on it and the coat of glaze did not. Every technique in here is a way of getting one of those three out of the way.

$7.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Intermediate
  • 30 printable pages
  • 8 video picks
  • 6-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 Miniature Pottery: Thrown and Built printable guide?

It is a printable workbook edition of The Clay Hole University’s free “Miniature Pottery, Thrown and Built” lesson. Nothing in it is a move you have not already made. It is centering, opening, pulling, trimming, drying, glazing and firing, exactly as you do them now, made smaller and faster and with a quarter of the water, on a pot with no mass in it to absorb a mistake. The guide takes it in order: the three things that refuse to shrink with the pot, how fast the wheel actually has to run and the arithmetic that says so, the eight clay bodies ranked smoothest first, ten steps at the wheel including the undercut that means you never have to trim it, hand building at a scale where it is often the better road, how to make a chuck when there is nothing to hold, why it dries four times faster than you expect, glazing something a coat of glaze can fill in, the two divisions to do if a piece has to fit a dollhouse, and what a set really costs to fire. On paper it adds a ten pot log, a bench card, a printed quiz with a full answer key, and a glossary.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Miniature Pottery, Thrown and Built” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 30printable pages, US Letter
  • 6quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 8hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 12glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
Why a printable, for this one

The first one fails in about nine seconds

A one inch pot is not a small mug. It is a mug where every tolerance got divided by four, and none of your tools got smaller with it. Everything you already know still applies. It just stops forgiving you, and it stops forgiving you faster than you can look anything up.

The single setting most people get backwards is the wheel speed, and it is not an opinion. A rim travels pi times its diameter past your finger every turn, so a one inch pot gives your hand about a sixth of the contact a six inch pot does at the same pedal position. Turn it up past what feels right and half the problems go away before you have touched the clay. The other half is water, which ends a miniature in about four seconds.

So the things worth having written down are all numbers and orders of operation: how fast, which clay, how deep to open, two pulls not five, undercut before you cut off, bag it now, one coat not three. They fit on a card you can prop against the splash pan, and a card does not mind wet hands.

Look inside

Real pages, for a hump and a board of tiny pots

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

  • Page 6 of the “Miniature Pottery: Thrown and Built” printable guide: run the wheel faster, not slower, shown with the sample watermark
    Run the wheel faster, not slowerThe setting almost everybody gets backwards, with the reason: what your fingertips actually feel is how far the rim travels, and three figures that put a number on it.
  • Page 7 of the “Miniature Pottery: Thrown and Built” printable guide: particle size is the whole decision, shown with the sample watermark
    Particle size is the whole decisionAll eight clay bodies ranked smoothest first, each with the maker’s own published shrinkage, and one line on what it does at this size.
  • Page 9 of the “Miniature Pottery: Thrown and Built” printable guide: throwing one, in ten steps, shown with the sample watermark
    Throwing one, in ten stepsThe hump as a workbench rather than a pot, then the ten steps, starting with the one that re-centers the crown before every single pot.
  • Page 18 of the “Miniature Pottery: Thrown and Built” printable guide: ten pots, and what each one taught you, shown with the sample watermark
    Ten pots, and what each one taught youA row a pot: the clay, the wheel speed, how many pulls, whether it needed trimming, and what to change. The fifth one stops being luck.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Paper beats the screen here

Your hands are wet, the wheel is running and the pot is an inch tall

This is a project made of small numbers that arrive four seconds apart, at the exact moment your hands are least able to touch anything.

  • It holds still

    Video is very good at motion and very bad at numbers. You will absorb somebody’s hand position in thirty seconds and lose the figure they said out loud at minute eleven. A page does not carry on without you.

  • The numbers are the technique

    Six times the wheel speed. A quarter of an inch deep. Two pulls, not five. One coat, not three. Four figures, printed once, glanced at all evening.

  • The order is the other half

    Re-center the crown, speed up, open with the tool, compress the floor, two pulls, thin the rim, undercut, bag it. Miss one and nothing complains until the pot is gone.

  • You are going to do it again

    One hump is ten pots. A log of the clay, the speed and the number of pulls turns a second session into something you can actually read.

How the guide is built

Built for a hump and an hour, not a four minute demonstration

Every guide in the series is designed as a workbook first and a document second. For this one, that means:

  • A learning dashboard before page one

    What you will learn, what is on the wheel tray, the mistakes that get made first, and what a good one looks like when you hold it next to a mug.

  • The wheel speed arithmetic, as a table

    Rim travel per turn at five diameters, and what each one means for the pedal. It is the difference between a wobbly lump and a pot that trues itself.

  • Eight clay bodies, ranked, with the makers’ figures

    Texture and published shrinkage for each one, and a line on what a speck of grog does to a wall a millimeter thick.

  • Ten steps, and the one that means no trimming

    Trimming a one inch pot is the hardest thing in the guide. The undercut you cut on the wheel is a finished foot, and getting it right means you may never need to.

  • Videos you can reach from a printed page

    Eight videos from seven potters, each with a note on why it is worth your time and a code that goes straight to it.

  • Plain words for the jargon

    A glossary written the way we would explain it standing next to you, from the hump and the chuck to rim travel and dollhouse scale.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “Miniature Pottery, Thrown and Built” lesson at The Clay Hole University. No paywall, no sign-up, no catch.

People pick this up because it looks sweet and cheap, and both of those are true, and then the first one goes sideways in about nine seconds and they decide they are not ready. They are ready. The pot is just not giving them any of the warnings they are used to.

Make six. Throw the first two away without thinking about it. Then look at the third one next to a mug you made last month and tell me your hands did not get better.

The University is free and stays free. The guides are the version rebuilt for paper with an unreasonable amount of care, and buying one keeps the free side going. Thank you. Genuinely.

Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole
Collect them

Build a little pottery library

Every guide carries a permanent number. This one is 08.09, in the project guides section, alongside tiles, jewelry, chains and everything else worth making on purpose. The number never changes and never gets reused, so a shelf of them stays in order.

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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Where this leads

What to read once the first hump is gone

These lessons pick up where this one leaves off. Each one is free to read now.

Good questions

Before you buy

Is this different from the free lesson?
The teaching is the same, and the free lesson is complete. The printable adds a ten pot log for your first session, a bench card for the wheel, a printed quiz with an answer key that explains every answer, and a glossary.
Do I need a wheel?
No. A whole section is pinching, coiling and thin slabs at this scale, and at an inch tall hand building is often the better road, not the fallback. Pinching gives you wall thickness control the wheel takes away, and nobody has ever pinched a pot too fast.
Do I need special miniature tools?
No, and that is one of the points the guide makes. Nine substitutions, each already in your tool box, in the studio or in a kitchen drawer: a chopstick, a needle tool, a rubber tip, fine tweezers, a sponge on a skewer and a paper strip that beats calipers at this size.
Is this a beginner project?
Not really, and the guide says so. If you have centered clay and pulled a wall you can do it, but there is nowhere to hide a wobble and no mass to absorb a mistake, so expect the first two to fail. It is rated Intermediate for exactly that reason.
Will it make my full size work better?
That is the honest reason to do it. It forces the two habits most potters are short of, using very little water and shaping with a tool held steady rather than chasing the clay, and a mug feels enormous and forgiving afterwards.
Does it cover what a set costs to fire?
Yes, including the rule that decides it. Pieces are priced one at a time, and the one time they are combined is a six inch kiln cookie, a quarter inch apart. Group them and a whole cookie is charged once. That is the difference between a set being cheap and a set being forty charges.
Is it Clay Hole specific?
The technique is not. Where the guide quotes our own clay bodies, our firing schedule or our prices it says so, and the shape of the argument holds in any studio with its own numbers in place of ours.
What format is it, and can I print it at home?
A PDF, sized for US Letter, with margins that survive a home printer. Print the whole thing, or just the bench card and the log page and leave the rest on a screen.
Do the videos work from a printed page?
Yes. Every video has a code beside it that goes straight to it, and every code is a first party theclayhole.com address rather than a redirect service, so it will still work in a year.
What if the guide gets updated?
Every edition carries its version number on the last page, and there is a code on that page that always points at the newest one. Corrections get folded back into the free lesson too.

Print it, and go and make six

Cone up five pounds, leave it tall, and make every pot out of the top inch. Throw the first two away without thinking about it. Bag each one the second it comes off. Then put the third next to a mug you made last month and see what an hour of working small did to your hands.

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