"Luting;
the act of attaching and sealing pottery parts or forms together with a clay
slurry"
I learned a long while back that when throwing my terra cotta, it is
best to make certain vase or bottle forms in two pieces, throwing the body and
necks separately. This ends up being infinitely easier that throwing them in
one piece where the terra cotta is constantly trying to collapse at every turn
of the wheel head. I start out by throwing the bodies first and then measure the
apertures and guesstimate what thrown neck form will look best on each piece,
the illustration shows a single ware board with three bodies and their corresponding
necks which are put together the next day after the pot base is trimmed with an
inset foot. Once the pot and neck are put together I generally add some form of
lug which connects from the neck to the body and brings some attention to the
join and shoulder area. In this particular case, one of the vases will be black
and white slipped and the other two will have an abstrakt resist decoration.
This particular form works from very small to quite large though these pots
will likely end up just shy of 14" when assembled. I can tell you from
past experience, there is no music that I have that can make throwing these in
one piece an enjoyable experience, thanks goodness to the person who pioneered
luting pieces together all those centuries ago.
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