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The Clay Hole University · Project Guides

Throwing a TaginePrintable pottery guide

The whole tagine, in the order you make it: what the cone is really doing, the seat and the caliper number that decide the fit, the base, the cone thrown upside down and the knob, and the drying, glazing and kitchen rules that decide whether it lasts.

$10.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Advanced
  • 30 printable pages
  • 9 video picks
  • 6-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 Throwing a Tagine printable guide?

It is the tagine on paper: why the lid is a cone and not a dome, starting weights and sizes for a small, standard and large pot, a stepped seat and the caliper number everything else is aimed at, the cone thrown upside down, the knob and its vent hole, the fit checked at three stages, drying the two pots as one, glazing and firing without fusing them, and what the finished pot can and cannot do in a kitchen. Built to be printed, ticked off and kept beside the wheel.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Throwing a Tagine” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 30printable pages, US Letter
  • 6quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 9hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 20glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For a pot that has to agree with itself

A tagine is not hard to throw. It is hard to make fit

Most people who can throw a wide bowl and a steep one can throw the two halves of a tagine. The trouble is that the halves have to agree with each other, and they only get to agree after both have dried, been fired and shrunk. A lid that dropped in beautifully on a Tuesday can be a hair too small on the shelf a month later, and a hair too small cannot be fixed.

Almost none of that is skill. It is a caliper reading taken at the right moment, a rim thrown a little wide on purpose, one strip of plastic over both pots, and a fit checked wet, at leather hard and again after bisque, while there is still something you can do about it. None of it is difficult once it is written down in the order it happens.

Then there is the part after the kiln. A stoneware tagine is ovenware, not flameware, and how it is heated decides whether it lasts for years or cracks the first time it is used properly. The guide gives that its own section, because it is the part most people skip.

Look inside

Real pages, for a bench with wet hands

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

  • Page 3 of the “Throwing a Tagine” 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 throw and again before you glaze.
  • Page 6 of the “Throwing a Tagine” printable guide: the numbers to start from, shown with the sample watermark
    The numbers to start fromClay weights, seat widths and cone heights for a small, standard and large pot, and the ratios worth memorizing. They are starting points, not laws, and the practice log has room for your own.
  • Page 15 of the “Throwing a Tagine” printable guide: fit, checked in stages, shown with the sample watermark
    Fit, checked in stagesWet with calipers, by hand at leather hard, and again after bisque. A lid is only ever right at a stage where you can still change it, so this is the page to have open when you sit it in its seat.
  • Page 24 of the “Throwing a Tagine” printable guide: every tagine, and how it fitted, shown with the sample watermark
    Every tagine, and how it fittedA log to write in: the seat you measured, the lid rim you threw to it, and how the lid sat at leather hard and after bisque. The second tagine starts from a number instead of a memory.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

The number you must not lose

A tagine takes weeks and hangs on a handful of measurements. Paper is good at both.

  • It holds still

    A page stays exactly where you left it while you steady a wide rim with two fingers. It does not go dark, and it does not need clay wiped off the screen.

  • A number with a home

    The seat measurement is the number the whole lid is aimed at. The guide has a page for writing it down next to how the lid sat at each stage, so it is on paper and not in your head.

  • Weeks in the middle

    Two pots drying together, a bisque, a glaze. The drying rules are a short list to pin above the shelf, not a video to find again when you have forgotten the plastic.

  • Beside the oven too

    The cold oven, the low heat and the trivet are on one page, so the rules that keep the finished pot whole can be read out to whoever else cooks in your kitchen.

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 numbers, checked

    We worked the clay weights back from volume and the firing sum from the studio’s rates, and both hold up. The cone height, the seat width and the size table agree with each other everywhere they appear.

  • Every video, read

    We read the description of all nine videos against the note beside each one. One note said a jar video used the same hand position as the tagine’s seat. Our own lessons say that video teaches a different move, and the guide now says so.

  • The knob, put right

    The lesson blamed trapped air for a knob blowing off in the bisque. It is water turning to steam, so the guide says that in all four places, and keeps the vent hole.

  • Four rules, put back

    The glazing list now says a kiln cookie or glaze catcher goes under every piece, that the glaze inside has to be one rated for food, that a fired lid is taken down wet, and that staff load the kilns.

  • A quiz that explains itself

    Six 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 “Throwing a Tagine” lesson, and that lesson is not going anywhere.

There is a small sound you learn to listen for. You lift the lid an inch, let go, and it drops into the seat with a soft tap of clay on clay.

Everything in this guide is there to earn that tap.

Then put a stew in it, and let it do what tagines have done for a very long time.

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.

See every printable guide, or every printable we sell on one page.

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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, the size table, the seat and the cone in numbered steps, a tagine log to write in, a one page summary, a glossary and a quiz with an answer key that explains every answer.
Do I need a wheel?
The guide is written for the wheel, and the cone is thrown upside down as a steep bowl. The fit checks, the drying rules and the kitchen rules apply just as much to a hand built tagine, though, and the guide has a note on building the base by hand and throwing the lid.
Is this too early for me?
It is marked Advanced, because a tagine is two difficult forms that have to agree with each other. If you have not made a lidded jar with a gallery yet, the guide says to start there, at a size where a mistake costs a pound of clay instead of eight.
Can I really cook in it?
In an oven, yes. On a burner, no. A stoneware tagine is ovenware and not flameware, and the guide has a whole section on how to heat it so that it lasts, including why it goes into a cold oven and never straight from the fridge to a hot one.
What if my lid comes out too small?
That is the classic fault, and it cannot be fixed, which is why the guide has you throw the rim a hair wide on purpose and take the fit at three stages. A lid that is a little wide can be trimmed. A lid that is a little small is scrap.
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 wheel, the one page summary and the tagine 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 tagine log are the two worth having by the wheel. 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 workbook pages are the ones that want paper, because you write on them.
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 and how our kilns are loaded 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 beside the wheel 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.

Throw the lid a hair wide, then check it at every stage

The pots take an afternoon and the fit takes weeks, and the guide is the rest of what stands between the two: the seat, the caliper number, the rim thrown wide, the plastic over both, the fit at leather hard and again after bisque, and the cold oven at the end. Do those and the lid drops in with a soft tap. Skip one and you find out at the kiln, when there is nothing left to do about it.

Get the guide · $10.00

The Clay Hole University Printable Guide Terms

Licensing, safety, digital delivery, and refund terms for printable guides and paper templates

Your copy is yours. The work behind it is not.

These terms cover every printable guide and every paper template from The Clay Hole. In this section, "product" means the guide or template you bought, including its PDF file and everything in it. The rules below apply to both. Paper templates add one permission, in the next section, and nothing else in that section loosens anything here.

Your purchase gives one individual purchaser a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license for personal use only. You may download the product to your own devices, print copies for your own use, write all over them, spill clay water on them, replace a coffee-damaged copy, and generally use the heck out of what you bought.

What you may not do is distribute the product to anyone else, whether you charge for it or not.

That means you may not share, forward, email, upload, post, publish, copy, reproduce, resell, sublicense, redistribute, or otherwise provide the product, or any substantial portion of it, to another person. That includes passing it on as a photo, scan, screenshot, tracing, printout, or recreation. You may not place it in a shared drive, group chat, membership library, online community, file-sharing service, studio resource folder, classroom packet, employee handbook, course, workshop, or other shared collection. You may not make copies for students, members, employees, friends, classes, studios, schools, groups, or organizations.

You may not remove or obscure copyright notices, watermarks, attribution, or other ownership information, or sell, republish, or commercially exploit modified or derivative versions of the product, including patterns, outlines, or designs based on it.

Purchasing the product does not transfer ownership of its copyrighted text, photographs, illustrations, graphics, designs, patterns, shapes, layouts, worksheets, or other original content. Those rights remain with The Clay Hole and their respective rights holders. Copyright law protects the expression contained in these guides and templates, while ideas, methods, techniques, and processes may have different legal treatment.

If you would like to use one of our guides or templates with a class, studio, school, team, or other group, contact The Clay Hole about permission or group licensing. Please do not make twenty copies and call it manifesting.

Paper templates: make them, sell what you make

Everything in the section above applies to paper templates in full, including the template file, its patterns, and its design. This section adds one permission, and the credit that goes with it. It is the only exception to the personal-use rule above.

If you buy a paper template, you may use it to make ceramic pieces, and you may sell those pieces, in person or online. That permission belongs to the purchaser, and it covers the ceramic pieces only. It does not cover the template, its patterns, or any copy or version of them, which may not be shared, sold, or passed on in any form.

You may not claim that you created the design. The design of each paper template, including its shapes, proportions, patterns, and layout, was created by Dan Pearce. That stays true no matter how many pieces you make or sell. Do not describe the design as your own, and do not sell it as your own design.

Your final creative choices are yours. The glazes, colors, surface decoration, carving, texture, and any changes you make to the form belong to your finished piece, and you may claim them as your own work. The structural credit for the design stays with Dan Pearce.

Credit is required for pieces sold online. If you sell online a piece made from an Advanced, Expert, Insane, or Legendary template, your listing must credit Dan Pearce as the designer of the template and link to theclayhole.com. For example: Made from a paper template designed by Dan Pearce, https://theclayhole.com. Pieces made from Beginner and Intermediate templates do not need the credit, but you still may not claim the design as your own.

Templates marked NEW

Every paper template starts out marked NEW, as part of the New Pattern Program. NEW means nobody has built that template in clay yet. It does not mean the template is unfinished. Every template is audited at least three times for accuracy and is drawn to work as designed. The NEW mark comes off once someone builds the template and it checks out.

When you buy, claim, or download a template marked NEW, or a bundle, package, or collection that holds one, you accept that it has not been built yet, that you use it at your own discretion, and that you may need to adjust as you build if your project needs it.

A template marked NEW is covered by every one of these terms, exactly like any other template. If you find something indisputably wrong in one, the promise in "Refunds, mistakes, and making it right" below applies.

Pottery is wonderfully unpredictable. It also carries real risk.

We work hard to make The Clay Hole University and our paper templates accurate, useful, practical, and ridiculously thorough. But pottery is a hands-on craft involving countless variables that no written guide can completely control or anticipate.

Depending on what you are doing, ceramics may involve extreme heat, kilns, electricity, gas, flame, sharp tools, spinning machinery, heavy equipment, pressurized equipment, silica-containing dust, fumes, chemicals, raw materials, stains, oxides, glazes, combustible materials, hot surfaces, breakable objects, and other hazards capable of causing serious injury, illness, property damage, fire, or worse.

These guides and templates are provided for general educational and informational purposes. They are not a substitute for hands-on training, competent supervision, your studio’s safety procedures, applicable laws or codes, Safety Data Sheets, or the instructions and warnings supplied by the manufacturers of your clay, glaze, chemicals, tools, kilns, equipment, protective gear, or other materials.

Studios, kilns, clay bodies, glazes, firing schedules, electrical systems, ventilation systems, equipment, environmental conditions, application thicknesses, material formulations, and individual techniques vary enormously. Something that works beautifully in one situation may fail spectacularly in another. That is part of pottery. Occasionally, it is a very expensive part of pottery.

You are responsible for determining whether any technique, material, combination, firing schedule, tool, or process described in a guide or template is appropriate and safe for your specific circumstances before using it.

Use appropriate protective equipment. Use adequate ventilation and dust control. Read manufacturer instructions and Safety Data Sheets. Follow your studio’s rules. Obtain qualified instruction when a process or piece of equipment requires it. Test materials and techniques before committing important work to them. If you do not understand how to perform something safely, do not proceed until you do.

Never assume that a ceramic surface, glaze, clay body, firing method, finished vessel, repair, decoration, or other result is food-safe, microwave-safe, dishwasher-safe, oven-safe, structurally sound, chemically stable, or suitable for any particular purpose solely because it appears in or is discussed in one of our guides or templates. Verify suitability independently when it matters.

Ceramics also refuses to sign contracts promising beautiful results. Colors change. Glazes move. Kilns have opinions. Pots crack. Materials interact unexpectedly. Manufacturers reformulate products. Equipment behaves differently. The Clay Hole does not guarantee any particular aesthetic, functional, firing, glazing, structural, or other result.

By choosing to use the information in a guide or template, you accept responsibility for your own materials, equipment, workspace, safety decisions, testing, methods, and results. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, The Clay Hole and its owners, employees, contributors, and affiliates are not responsible for injury, illness, property damage, lost work, failed projects, kiln or equipment damage, financial loss, or other loss arising from or related to your use of, or reliance upon, the guide or template.

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits any right or liability that applicable law does not allow us to exclude or limit.

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These are digital products delivered electronically and made available for use immediately after purchase. Unlike a physical book, a downloaded digital file cannot meaningfully be returned to us once it has been delivered.

By completing your purchase and requesting immediate access to the guide or template, you consent to digital delivery beginning immediately. Where applicable law provides a cancellation or withdrawal period for digital content, you acknowledge that beginning the download, access, or delivery of the digital content may cause that cancellation or withdrawal right to end.

Once access to or delivery of the purchased digital guide or template has begun, the purchase is final and non-refundable except where a refund, replacement, cancellation, or other remedy is required by applicable law.

If the file you receive is corrupted, inaccessible, materially different from what was described, or there is a genuine technical problem with delivery, please contact us. We would much rather fix the problem than leave you staring angrily at a PDF that refuses to PDF.

Refunds, mistakes, and making it right

Except where the law requires otherwise, we do not offer refunds on any paper template or printable guide. Pottery has a hundred different ways to do most things, and every guide and template shows one of them. We put real work into making each one as accurate, thorough, and finished as we can, because we want you to love what you bought. A guide or template that you would have done differently, or a piece that surprises you in the kiln, is pottery being pottery, not a problem with the file.

Mistakes happen, even in work we care about this much. To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not responsible for any cost or loss that comes with an error in what we send, whether that is clay, materials, firing costs, or your time.

What we will do is fix it. If you find something that is indisputably wrong in a guide or template (an actual error, not a different way of doing it), contact us and we will correct it within a week and upload the new document so you can download it.

Custom step illustrations from Clayla have one more promise. It is rare for an illustration not to work, but Clayla does not get every drawing right. If you buy one and it misses, text us the illustration and we will be happy to refund it.

Terms version 2026-11-15