You can move this picture: drag it, press and hold then drag on a touch screen, or use the arrow keys.Printable guide 05.20

The Clay Hole University · The Pottery Wheel

Personality Types and the Pottery WheelPrintable pottery guide

Eight habits the wheel finds in your first few sessions, the technical fix for each one, and the seven that work on all of them.

$5.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Beginner
  • 18 printable pages
  • 1 video pick
  • 8-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 Personality Types and the Pottery Wheel printable guide?

It is a printable workbook edition of The Clay Hole University’s free “Personality Types and the Pottery Wheel” lesson. It is about habits rather than types: the eight the wheel tends to find in a beginner’s first few sessions, what is actually going wrong in the clay for each one, and the seven fixes that work on all eight. On paper it adds a session log, a one page card for beside the wheel, a quiz with a full answer key, and a glossary.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Personality Types and the Pottery Wheel” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 18printable pages, US Letter
  • 8quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 1video, with a QR code
  • 15glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
Why a printable, for this one

The wheel is not judging you. It is just very hard to argue with.

Nearly everybody who sits down at a wheel decides, within about three sessions, that it has found something out about them. Too impatient. Too heavy handed. Not careful enough. Not relaxed enough.

What it has actually found is a habit, and every one of the eight in this guide has a technical fix that has nothing to do with your character. Pressing too hard is not impatience, it is a grip and a wheel speed, and both of those can be changed on purpose.

That is what makes this one worth having on paper. The fixes are all about doing less, and doing less is almost impossible to notice yourself doing. The log is there so you can see it happening instead of trusting how the session felt.

Look inside

Real pages, for the first few sessions

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

  • Page 4 of the “Personality Types and the Pottery Wheel” printable guide: what this guide is and is not, shown with the sample watermark
    What this guide is and is notHabits, not types. No quiz that sorts you into a box, and nothing you are stuck with.
  • Page 5 of the “Personality Types and the Pottery Wheel” printable guide: the eight habits, shown with the sample watermark
    The eight habitsEach one named plainly, with what is actually happening in the clay rather than what it says about you.
  • Page 6 of the “Personality Types and the Pottery Wheel” printable guide: the seven fixes, shown with the sample watermark
    The seven fixesThey work on all eight habits, and every one of them is about doing less rather than trying harder.
  • Page 8 of the “Personality Types and the Pottery Wheel” printable guide: the session log, shown with the sample watermark
    The session logDoing less is hard to notice from the inside. One row per session is how you see it working.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Paper beats the screen here

Why this one, of all of them, belongs on paper

You cannot see your own habits while you are busy having them, and the fix here is subtraction, which is even harder to notice. Paper keeps the score.

  • It names the habit without naming you

    Find the row that sounds like your last session and read across to what is actually happening in the clay. It is a shorter conversation than the one in your head.

  • It makes doing less visible

    Every fix here is about removing something: less water, less pressure, less speed, fewer pots. None of that feels like progress in the moment, which is exactly why it gets written down.

  • It is kinder than your memory

    A session you thought went badly and a session that actually went badly are different things, and the log is the only one of the two that is honest a week later.

  • One card lives by the wheel for good

    The eight habits and the seven fixes on a single page you can pull out of the binder and keep where you throw.

How the guide is built

Built for the first few sessions, when it feels personal

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 you will need, the things beginners run into first, and what progress actually looks like when the fix is doing less.

  • The complete lesson, redesigned for paper

    Why the wheel finds this out, the eight habits with what is really happening in the clay, and the seven fixes that work on all of them.

  • The same trait somewhere else

    The section that puts the habit back in proportion, because the thing the wheel found is rarely only about pottery.

  • A session log that tracks subtraction

    One row per session, for the thing you did less of and what the clay did about it. It is the only way to see a fix that consists of not doing something.

  • A quiz that teaches instead of grading

    Eight questions with an answer key that explains every answer, so a wrong one still teaches you something.

  • Plain words for the jargon

    A fifteen term glossary, from bracing and off center to recovery and reclaim, written the way we would explain it at the wheel.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

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

Almost everybody decides in their first month that the wheel has worked out something unflattering about them. It has worked out a habit, and habits have fixes. Nobody should have to pay to hear that, so the lesson stays free.

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 05.20, the twentieth guide in The Pottery Wheel. The series is designed to live together in a binder, section by section, so the craft ends up on your shelf in the order you learn it.

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.

See every printable guide

  • 5guides in your cart1 on us
  • 9guides in your cart2 on us
Where this leads

What to read once the habit has a name

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 session log, a one page card for beside the wheel, a printed quiz with an answer key, and a glossary.
Is this a personality test?
No, and the guide says so on its first page. There is no quiz that sorts you into a box. It is eight habits the wheel tends to find, and every one of them has a technical fix.
I have only had one lesson. Is this too early?
It is close to the right time. The habits in here show up in the first few sessions, and reading them before you have decided what the wheel means about you is the best possible moment.
What if more than one sounds like me?
That is normal and the guide expects it. The seven fixes work on all eight habits, which is rather the point of arranging it that way.
Do I need to be at a wheel to use it?
For the log, yes. For the rest, no. Quite a lot of it lands harder when you read it on the drive home than it does while your hands are wet.
Is there much technique in here?
Enough to act on, and it points at the full lessons for the rest. This one is about which lever to reach for, not about the whole method of centring or pulling.
I am not at The Clay Hole. Is it still useful?
Yes. The habits belong to the wheel, not to our building. Anything specific to our studio is marked as ours, and the studio numbers carry the date they were true.
Do I need a fancy printer?
No. It is designed 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.
Can I print it in black and white?
Yes. Nothing depends on color, and we looked at the workbook pages in grayscale to be sure.
Can I use it on an iPad or laptop instead?
Yes. Every QR code in the guide is also a tappable link, so on a screen you just tap instead of scanning.
How do I get it after I buy?
Right after checkout you get a download link by email and on your order confirmation page. Each link works up to seven times.
What if the guide gets updated?
Every edition carries a version number. When we correct or improve a guide, everyone who bought it gets an email with the new edition at no charge.
Can I share it with my class or studio?
Please don’t. It is licensed for your own personal use. Anyone can read the full lesson free online, and the printable is here if they want their own copy.

Do less, not more

Print it tonight. Pick the habit that sounds like your last session, choose one thing to do less of, and write the row when you get up.

Get the printable · $5.00

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