I bought myself a new tool for Christmas. After a fairly successful year selling my pottery at local farmers’ markets, and off my website, and teaching, I decided to invest in my studio and bought myself a clay extruder. It is exactly like the ones we had with play dough – only made of metal. It can extrude square tubes, hexagonal tubes, round tubes, as well as all those shapes as solids.

When I bought it, I wasn’t sure how I was going to put it to use, but, now that I have it, I can’t seem to get out of the studio. So many new projects to explore, so many new creative ideas. For decades, I have described myself as a production potter. Nice functional pottery, but differing from other potters who may spend a day on each piece. I can fill a kiln after an afternoon of throwing at the wheel. With hand building, though, I find myself moving away from production, and focusing more on the individual piece – which actually is a good thing.

One of the tricks with this extruder, though, is keeping the tube straight. It has a tendency to want to twist. There is one artist on line I have seen, who makes the twist even more exaggerated – and it looks really cool.

Here are just a few things I have made over the last few days. They still need to be bisque fired, and then glazed and refired, but each of the more detailed pieces is taking a couple of hours to make, and it seems so much more satisfying. Can’t wait to see how they look when they come out of the kiln after being glazed!

(If you haven’t had a chance, be sure to check out the workshops scheduled for January! )https://worksfromthewoods.store/product-category/classes/

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